Vitality Issue 1

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This magazine is © 2015 by Jesse Ellorris and Vitality Magazine. All works
© 2015 by the individual author or artist credited. Anything not credited
belongs to Vitality Magazine. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Alex Garcia, a twenty-year-old transgender, demirormanitlt
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; Fe

table of contents

Two Grandfathers e
by Caitlin Wils

iy

(It Can Be) Difficult to Be Human [SometiMeS] © ..........cscseeeeeteeeenned
by Aimee Herman

DMSO AFG 0 © i... s:orsceszsccesensensrbacatosnsssessvenscasesatnantonistoacasctsensosesvenvennaenssg ao
by Kayla Bashe

Ednaes.
by jan Stec ‘kel

Who Gets the Door «e.. aera td
by Erika Gisela Abad Merced / Illustrated by Alex Garcia

A Boy Named THOMAS wwe... sccsescscesconsnsantapsoitintesesessesanssaseusisasessendenienseero dB:
by Evelyn Deshane

On CircumaMbience @ «...,..:css.cosccescsssscascastincsiacsesessaassattecisorassasraiergeransineo
by Kevin McLellan

The Best Day e. nia se coa ang iagaS ennai Tat apiandaxea aes Renate aat oat sa TREE
by Claudie ‘Arseneault

The Sorceress Who Had No Hearte
by Coral Moore / Illustrated by

APA CLITA HONING © WW i cacecssescssisncsseesiesnsnedacacraessisnsscndisbccesauranensenaienapesaner
by A. Merc Rustad

Architecture of a Blistex POt © .........ccceccssessesssteseessessnserseensenenseseareseesaeei DT
by Rebecca Evans

The Hollow e .. oa OS
by Kendra Leigh ‘Speeding /" illustrated by “Savannah Horrocks

Proofe... scis chi aaron aR N TEA Gas nara mATRt Oe
by Johnny ‘Sfarnas

two grandfathers

by caitlin wilson

Fisher-grandfather and Net-Mender-grandfather tell stories as
the days draw down to winter, one with his sharp hooks glinting in his
lap and the other casting tiny shadow-nets with each stitch, and the
best is the story about the day they found me.

Fisher-grandfather starts:

“It was the eve of the spirits, and we were pulling in one last
net before turning for home. The wind was whistling to itself in the
rigging—"

Net-Mender-grandfather interrupts.

“The wind was doing nothing of the sort. It was blowing, and
that's it, and that’s all.”

Fisher-grandfather rolls his eyes.

“The wind, in any case, was blowing through our rigging, and it was
high time we returned, for on the eve of the spirits, my eel-daughter,
strange things are known to happen.

‘We pulled and pulled on that old net—"

Net-Mender-grandfather interrupts again.

“It was not an old net; it was my finest and you know it, Pavel
Aleksandreyev. At least tell the story right.”

Fisher-grandfather leans across the arm of his chair and kisses
Net-Mender-grandfather's cheek. He always does that when Net-
Mender-grandfather is angry, and Net-Mender-grandfather pretends to
be miffed, but his eyes sparkle like fish scales so we know he isn't really
mad.

Fisher-grandfather picks up a new lure and the thread of the
story, tying one into the other.

“We pulled and pulled, but at last we saw that we could not
retrieve the net. It must have been caught on some sunken log, or
perhaps even an ancient tzar’s battleship. But it was stuck, stuck, stuck
down there, and the sun was setting already.”

This is the part where | chime in

"But then, right as you turned to cut the last float f

“Right as we slipped the knife under the last knot—

“A lady with eyes like the space between stars and long green
hair rose from the deep, and in her arms—"

"Was a little scaly baby, weeping and wailing as if she foretold
the end of the world!”

“And that was me!”

Fisher-grandfather scoops me into his side and nuzzles my scalp.

“Yes indeed, little eel-daughter, that was you. And the beautiful
lady never said a word, but she kissed you right on your forehead and

Ee)

then she stared into each of our eyes. | can never forget how she looked
as though her heart were breaking, She must have loved you very much,
little eel-daughter, to come all the way to the surface, and what must
she have thought to find no royal barge, but only two old men and a
torn fishing net! | tried to promise her with my eyes that we would love
you as our own, for it was clear that she was no ordinary lady, and |
doubt she could even hear our voices in the thin air.”

Net-Mender-grandfather scoffs,

“She was beautiful, but no greater a beauty than our own village
women, Her eyes were only a mother’s eyes, and her pain that of any
other woman losing her babe.”

“Ooh, you hush, you old Mikhail Grigorov,” Fisher-grandfather
admonishes. “You have no poetry in your soul, and you should not
dampen that in others which you lack yourself. Besides, she only looked
at you a moment. Clearly | had the better figure, and even now look at
me! | am a paragon among men."

Net-Mender-grandfather scowls at the net in his lap, but | can
see him blushing even so. He loves Fisher-grandfather very much, |
know,

“Now then, little eel-daughter, what is left of the story? Ah, yes.
We brought you home and put you in a washbasin full of seawater, and
my darling eel-daughter, you laughed and laughed when we did that,
though you had sobbed the whole way home. | do believe you were
happy to be on the land and in the sea at once, you munchkin thing.

“And we love you very much."

If | stretch, | can reach the floor to push my basin between Net-
Mender-grandfather on one side and Fisher-grandfather on the other,
And they both put aside their glinting haaks and rough hempen rope,
and they lean down at the same time and kiss me /oud on both ears,
which makes me giggle and squirm, Then they pack away their things,
and bank the fire so | won't be too warm or too cold, and they creak
away to their bed. Fisher-grandfather winks at me and pinches Net-
Mender-grandfather's rear, and Net-Mender-grandfather jumps like
he always does and swats at him. | can hear their grumbly voices, one
rolling like the combers that sometimes stream across our beach, the
other like the deep boom-crack of sea ice breaking, until | fall asleep.

ee eceeeoee

caitlin wilson is works as.an editorial assistant for a sustainability magazine.
This is her first fiction publication,

rebecca schauer is a twenty-three-year-old cisgender lesbian artist. She's
the artist behind the webcomic Fruitioop & Mr. Downbeat. More of her wark can
be found at beccasartstuff.weebly.com.

6

(it can be) difficult to be
human [sometimes]

by aimee herman

Take fourteen hours out of your day to create a manual for making
it through a mood. Call up the lover who always mispronounced
your favorite word and remind them the importance of
expiration dates, clean sheets and the texture of toast. Mediate
an argument between humans you never met before but feel the
desire to restore. Give your mouth away just for an evening and
forget about your allergy to men, moustaches and margarine. In
order to make new friends, sometimes-yotrneedte pretend you
understand how to download or upload and logout immediately.
On the second day of Autumn, you will receive an unmarked
scab from someone who used to know seventeen things about
you; this will be their version of a love letter; do not eat it; or if
you do, tell no one of this. Everyday thereafter, this encrusted
wound will cause you to mispronounce your favorite word. You
will choose silence over speech lessons, The next time you weep
will be three years two months and four days from now. It will
be attributed to southern women or a misplaced pronoun. Take
felted megaphone and press against pink mouth. Push out every
version of queer you can think of and let whatever still forms
leak out like bits of unformed song. Audition a chorus of revelers.
Parade around your city in every version of rainbow your skin
illuminates. Sometimes, to be a human canbe diffiewtt is to
remain even in the moments when there is nothing left to do but
repeat the echoes of carnival reminding you who you are.

sep eeneanese

aimee herman is a Brooklyn-based poet and performance artist. She is
an adjuct professor at Bronx Community College and works with both Poetry
Teachers NYC and the Red Umbrella project. For more information, including
where to ‘ind more of her poetry, go to aimeeherman.wordpress.com.

e7

amuse afire

by kayla bashe

Once, a king who decided to outlaw theatergoing burned a
theater.

He had his men trap the actors and the audience inside. The
actors, knowing that attempting to escape would be futile, continued
the show even as tongues of flame ignited the walls around them-- and
the audience, who had been banging desperately on the doors, was
entranced once again by their stagecraft. Instead of dying with desperate
screams on their throats, they died in the midst of wild applause. But
the fire was just as enchanted by the beauty of their performance, and
it transformed the troupe instead of burning them. And they lived...
forever.

The troupe has three acrobats of varying sizes and a strongman,
but no fire-eater, All of them, from beautiful old Ruthe, who plays the
grandmothers, down to little Ainsley, the tiniest clown who plays boy
princes and heroine's sons, could fill in for him.

They are all eaters of fire.

Today their Player Queen is Oberon, the King of Shadows, and
her night-dark hair is short and slick. With the addition of a starlight
cloak, her customary black becomes the garments of fairy royalty.
Her lover, Innacentio, performs Titania. Everyone laughs to see the
beautiful performer, hir eyelashes long in sleep, awake and fall madly
in love with an ass-- and fondle the dankey’s muzzle and phallus both
enthusiastically. The audience howls, falls from their seats, and nearly
chokes.

Afterwards, she sheds her cloak, ze the translucent wings,
and they come out to greet the crowd. After an hour of accepting
compliments, answering questions like “How do you do that?” or "Was
that real magic?” with a smile and a finger raised to her lips, the Player
Queen knows itis time to start clearing out the audience. A good show
always ought to end when the audience still wishes that it never would,

And then itis time to strike the set, load everything into the carts,
pack up, and move on. By the end of the month, they will accomplish
thirty-six performances in thirty-six different towns.

It is in town twenty-seven that something goes wrong.

“Open your ears, you,” Innocentio calls, running into hir lover's
tent with almost childish enthusiasm.

The Player Queen is twisting through a series of acrobatic warm
ups, but when Innocentio wants her to listen, she always looks up. “Yes?"

“| heard there's a preacher in town, and | thought I'd listen to
8ee@

our competition, See if | can pick up any tricks of improvisation for our
performances tonight.”

“As long as you're back by curtain-up.” The Player Queen twines
herself about Innocentio like a cat and kisses hir cheek before letting
hir go.

Ze misses first call, which is all right, because ze wears the least
makeup of all of them-- just a bit of blush to bring out those already-
rosy cheeks and a smudge of pigment to define the brows. She always
applies it for hir, tilting hir chin upwards to look into hir eyes; and she
knows that although ze could do it hirself, ze likes the ritual. Sometimes
they run lines. When Innocentio misses second call, though...

Itseems as if everyone's trying to crowd into her tent at once.

“Calm down, calm down,” she says, getting to her feet. “Don't all
speak over each other's lines. Let me understand what it is you have to
say.”

“Your dear heart's done a bunker,” says Ruthe worriedly. "| don’t
have the slightest idea what's wrong with that youth.”

Little Ainsley’s bottom lip wobbles. "Are we going to have to
cancel the performance?”

The Player Queen stands to reassure them. “We're not canceling
the show. Have we canceled one yet?”

A resounding chorus of “No! comes from her troupe.

‘Then what show will we do?” another performer queries
tremulously. “As much as I'd love to see your Mephistopheles again, we
can't do The Fall of Faustus without Faust.”

Her mind is agile as her feet as she quicksteps through
possibilities: what will play well in this town, and what can they manage
without Innocentio? “Let's run Alfonso, or the Agnostic Old Fool, put the
tumbling in the interval, leave out the Lazzi of Kisses and cut out all the
swear words. Afterwards, we'll all go on the hunt. Change costumes,
now."

Alfonso, or... is acommedia about a strict but non-believing father
who wants to prevent his beautiful young daughter from marrying a
poor but godly man. Two angels, Harlequin and Calumbina, come down
to earth to force him to believe in a deity by setting up coincidences
that can be the work of none other but the Divine. They cut the part of
the funny old woman by swapping lines around and give Columbina to
Ruthe, Cutting all but one of the soliloquies means the Player Queencan
give the role of the male romantic lead to the Strongman, so she herself
performs Harlequin with slick brilliance and dazzling flair, tumbling over
her feet to make everyone laugh. But her thoughts are running like a
backdrop in her head: where is my Innocentio, where in the world is my
dear blonde heart?

Too gentle for offstage combat, ze may have been waylaid

9

by brigands-- thrown into a well, or the river, or possibly worse, The
members of her troupe do not die or age. They are hardly ever ill. But
they can be harmed.

After the show, the troupe roams the town and the roads beyond
looking for Innocentio. They find hir by the crossroads out of town,
sitting on the grass in a way that’s sure to stain hir trousers. The Player
Queen runs to hir at once, her actors following. Innocentio's face is as
openly confused as a child's, and hir usual air of knowing playfulness
somehow gone; when she takes hir hands, they are soft, but cold, like
those of the dead. She keeps her startled gasp held tight and silenced
behind a mask of friendliness. Even if ze’s fallen down and hit hir head,
panicking never helps. “Hello, love. Do you know who we are?”

“Who am |?” And then, hir words coming out in a rush as ze takes
in the gaudy outfits of the people surrounding hir, “I’m not an actor, am
|? The Priest said theater is immoral.”

Everyone else just gapes, but the Player Queen improvises
an explanation lickety-split, laying her hand on |Innocentio’s knee. “A
member of our company. One who mends the sets and costumes, and
who tends to our horses and our gear.”

“| think | can manage that," ze says. “Mending is an honorable
trait in the eyes of our Lord, if it is useful. The Priest said so.”

Later ze will shy away from touch, but now, hir new unthinking
mind not fully formed yet, Innocentio lets Player Queen fall to her knees
beside hir and wrap hir in her arms.

The Innocentio she had known was all things pure, kind, and
graceful. A brilliant artist with an easy laugh, ze sounded like an angel
when ze sang, and when ze was crying out underneath her at the close
of night, ze was a creature of flesh and lusts indeed. This is a blank
slate of Innocentio, a tabula rasa, a hollow shell of her once and future
dearest heart.

The Player Queen has never played Ophelia. There's too much
of a fire in her, a spirit too drawn to swiftness and the sword, yet now
she quotes the Drowned Maiden: “Oh, what a noble mind here is
overthrown.”

She feels like Beatrice swearing her oath of vengeance: / will find
who has done this to you, and | will eat his heart in the marketplace.

Innocentio is not only newly religious and an amnesiac, but ze
is entirely stripped of hir former intelligence and strength of character.
Ze does exactly-- exactly! - as ze's told. For example, if you instruct
hir, “Go to the butcher and get a pound of raw steak for Ruthe’s face
mask,” you have to make sure that you also told hir, “And come back

10

afterwards.” Otherwise ze just stands there outside the shop, like an
abandoned puppy, waiting for someone to take hir home. Sometimes
ze sings to hirself, then stops suddenly, as if afraid to be noticed. In
those moments, the soft, perfect huskiness of hir voice is just as the
Player Queen remembers it, and longing swells and pains her heart.

While they unload the properties in a new stop, the Player Queen
notices that Innocentio lifts boxes awkwardly, as if trying to avoid using
hir right arm. “You're favoring that shoulder, Are you all right?"

Ze has to consider it. “I don't know, but the Priest said that those
who believe will be healed.”

“Get your shirt off. Let me see if you're hurt.”

Inside her tent, after ze shrugs off the garment, the Player
Queen seats hir ona crate and runs strong hands over hir back; ze
stays obediently still. Palms press against skin, and the tension and
pain she feels there make her wince. “When did you last stretch?”

Ze tilts hir head, confused. “Stretch?”

“Actors should always stretch before performances. Keeps us
limber.”

I’m not an actor, the Player Queen expects hir to say, Instead,
ze leans in and looks at her, Really looks at her. "Can | make you feel
better?”

That catches her so, so off guard. "What makes you think | need
help?” she asks warily,

“You look sad. I've seen you. You never look sad. Not with this
strange stillness. You're always talking or moving or dancing. Like a
tongue of flame from a bonfire, the way it flickers and leaps. Dangerous,
but beautiful.”

The adoration in hir eyes kindles old sentiments. “Don’t move,”
the Player Queen murmurs, moving towards hir with the grace of a
snake.

‘Will that help you?”

“It might help me if | kissed you.”

Innocentio nods. “You can try that.”

She slides a hand up hir thigh and leans in close.

Ze feels so damn cold, her perfect dear heart with sunshine
hair, and she tries to kiss the fire back into hir. It would work, she's
sure, if ze only knew how to kiss her back, But the fire won't catch. It’s
like ze’s already left this world. Her dear heart has become a marble
statue, with all the stillness that implies.

Ze pulls back, shakes zir head. “That kiss felt like an act of lust.
Lust is very, very sinful.”

“It’s not sinful. We're in love.” Innocentio doesn’t understand.
How can she make hir understand? She seizes on a piece of poetry

ll

from an old tumbling act, reciting it with all the feeling she
contains. “You are the lark to my magpie, the sun to my moon.”

But ze doesn’t understand the metaphor, "I can’t be the sun. |
would burn.” When she moves towards hir again, ze pulls away. “Don't
touch me. | knew you were dangerous-- | just knew it!" Ze slaps the
Player Queen across the face-- not a stage slap, but a real slap that
makes her face sting-- and runs from the tent.

The Player Queen knows the proper ways to faint and fall. She's
played Hamlet's death. But this collapse starts with an undignified loss
of strength and ends with an ugly crumpling. This bit would never do on
stage, she thinks, We'd have to reblock this whole scene...

Exit consciousness. Exit her.

Faces appear before her, sudden bright spots; she is in bed, and
the sun through the window shines above huts,

“You missed first call.”

“Can you do the show?"

She pushes words through a thick fog. “What kind of a Player
Queen would | be if | couldn't manage a matinee?” Departing from
blankets and bed makes her shiver. “Get my coat. And my gloves.”

Ruthe looks worried. “They're in storage. You haven't asked for
them in years, love.”

“I'm doing the show with my gloves and my coat. They should
be with the props from Richard the Third,” she says, getting out of bed.
Normally she is as limber as an ink-black cat, but her muscles feel stiff.
Suddenly, she staggers; as one, everyone hurries to catch her and prop
her back up on her feet.

“Wl be all right,” she says sternly. To them, it’s a reassurance; to
herself, itis an order. “| can do the show."

The matinee is like slow starvation; by curtain call she is trembling
with chill, though she smiles through it nonetheless. Afterwards, sitting
on agilt-and-paint throne, she calls the troupe together. “We're changing
the route,”

When the troupe finds Innocentio at the priest's main temple,
she can hardly bear to look at hir. Ze stands between marble pillars and
preaches modesty, the eschewing of makeup and finery, spanking one's
children, submission to God.

There are moments when hir abhorrent words seem almost
believable, for ze is as every bit as beautiful and charismatic now as ze
was on the stage, and she has to recite speeches from the Alchemist
under her breath to keep from crying out a soliloquy at the sheer
wrongness of everything.

Afterwards, the troupe enters the temple. They are a motley
12

procession now; whatever chill infects their queen has spread to them.
The age of years has started to show in their costumed finery, patterns
fading to indistinguishable muddy shades, The Strongman’s face is
white with pain, and his muscles seem to visibly shrink, shrivel, and
atrophy. One of little Ainsley’s legs dangles uselessly, and he seems
very small and very crumpled, New wrinkles form like crawling vines on
Ruthe's face

The priest, most of his face concealed, smiles at them. “Have
you come to collect this member of your troupe? Ze's seen the light.”
He moves his hood back.

The Player Queen recognizes him at last. "You burned our
theater, The Lakehouse. There were children in the audience.”

“And hopefully the flames showed them the error of their ways,”
he says, with a too-sweet smile.

You played the king, she almost says. Then she remembers that
most people don't live their lives in front of canvas backdrops, and she
corrects herself: "You were the king.”

"Yes-- and instead of giving you death, | gave you a strange sort
of life, But I've worked out haw to remedy that. When ze first came to
hear me speak, | drew the flame from your lover's heart and soul and
bones, hir feet and fingertips. Now | will see all of you dead.”

At a gesture, one of the priest's acolytes brings him a torch.
The Player Queen feels her entire being straining towards the leaping
flames.

"This bit of wood was taken frorn the ruins of your den of
performative theatrical iniquity. Ze will refuse the torch, and therefore
extinguish it-- not only a symbolic rejection of the sin of theater, but
also undoing the magic spell that keeps you alive. At last I'll see you
made vulnerable. |'ll see you burn out. “

The Player Queen paces around him with all the contained
power of a jaguar preparing to spring, seething with energy, drawing
on the last dregs of the flame within. “You may extinguish our lives, but
the show will not stop. The music continues, and the lights still shine.”

His expression is grim. “At the end of your lives, you will suffer in
hell for your devilish ways.”

Her technique and training does not fail. She will be brave-- or
seem So, at least. So, drawing on all practice and apprenticeship, she
smiles slyly, as if the whole world was watching her and marveling at
her art, “At least I've lived.” People always say that hell is fire-- but when
she meets his eyes, she knows it's ice. Cold, dead, and banal, so cold
that no one wants to move or breathe.

“Give me the torch, please,” her sometime lover says politely.

The troupe clusters together, holds themselves as bravely as
they can.

13

Innocentio takes a step towards the Player Queen and tilts hir
head. Ze points at her; innocent curiosity peeks out of hir blue eyes, in
contrast to the priest-king. “Why don’t you weep?”

An answer comes easily. “Because I'm not the sort to have
regrets, When there was something | wanted to do-- a role | wanted
to play, a beautiful person | wanted to kiss-- | did it. | didn’t waste time
mucking about with calling myself bad and sinful. | was happy.” Softly,
she adds, “And so were you, Innocentio. When you were mine.”

Wrapping hir fingers around the torch, Innocentio meets hir
Queen’s dark eyes, The devil's eyes were blue as ice, but her lover's are
as blue as the heart of a flame.

“Then let it be known,” ze says, “that | choose to burn, | choose
to sin. My life is mine; | will be glad." As gracefully as any veteran fire-
eater, ze brought the torch to his lips and swallowed the flame. Within
seconds ze burns from within, doubled over and yelling out from what
hir body interprets as pain. But then hir rictus of agony changes into
a determined smile. The Player Queen can see hir mind working, like
a child learning to walk for the very first time, as ze figures out how
to stand up tall. Then, with a flash of light and a whoosh, the flame
disappears under his skin. Ze shakes hirself out and smiles, radiant.

Vigor and heat have returned to hir blood. Before, ze was as
stone; now ze is the moon again, reflecting the sun. The fire ripples
through them all. Faded costumes, bedraggled with holes, ravel, re-
sequin, and glimmer again. Colors brighten. The acrobats whoop with
joy and turn handsprings, and the Strongman lifts Ruthe.

The king-turned-priest tries to exit, but the Player Queen seizes
him in her strong sinewy arms, spreads her long-fingered hands out
over his red, sweaty head, and snaps his neck. He doesn’t get back up
afterwards, not even when Little Ainsley claps. This isn’t stage combat,
after all.

One of his followers creeps nervously forward; the others follow.
“if you don’t mind, can you please not kill us?”

“We were only following him because this area is poor in trade
and land, and we didn’t know what else to do,” another hurries to say.

All of them nod vigorously. “We'll work for you now, if you want.”

One who seems to be higher in rank raises his hand. “You can
have the building, if you want. We'll even help you put on plays in it."

Stagehands! And more than just stagehands, she thinks as she
scans the room's build-- a proper trapdoor, a lift, a trapeze she can
trust. A balcony. Tumbling silks for aerial dance-- she hasn't gone up
on the silks since Verona, but she’s sure she still has the knack for it.
Already she knows where things will go.

"We'll have a theater,” the Strongman breathes, wide-eyed.

Ruthe corrects; "We'll have a home.”

14

With a low sound of excitement, the Player Queen beckons her
lover close, and they kiss each other breathless. Everything is strength
and heat and life again, bright as spotlights, bright as fire.

kayla bashe is a cisgender, bisexual college student and the author of
several short novels exploring relationships between queer girls against the
backdrop of science fiction and fantasy stories, including My Lady King and her
most recent To Stand in the Light, both available on Amazon.

edna

by jan steckel

My grandparents’ Brazilian cook
danced with a band at night.
Evenings, she'd samba

around the mahogany table,
ladling vichyssoise into

gilded bowls. On each bowl
she'd float a carved radish rose.

She called her gnarled feet
"dancer's hooves,” claimed
to be ashamed of them.

Still, she painted her toenails
the color of dried blood,

let them peek through
peep-toed shoes,

If | had told her she was

my first female crush, she'd have
laughed like samba bells.

She'd have shaken, whistled, rattled,
boomed like her boyfriend’s band.

jan steckel is a bisexual poet and writer whose poetry book The Horizontal
Poet won a Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Two of her other
books, Mixing Tracks and The Underwater Hospital, have also received awards
for LGBT writing. You can find more of her work at jansteckel.com.

6@15

who gets the door

by erika gisela abad merced

An attempt to walk out of the cafe. Good conversation.
Conversation that does not need to end, though touching hasn't
happened yet. No hands. No arms. No accidental brushes. And
yet, with Denny in hir flatcap and Cia twirling her fingers around
the frills of her scarf, they stand. One way out. Two people. Four
hands. A dozen options. Seconds are hours. Giggling erupts.
Smiles break out on both faces. The question of who comes to the
surface, right under the skin, as the sequence of events unravels
behind them.

Cia grabs the handle. She holds on outside, waiting. Denny
follows out, lip corner still pulled up from the unspoken. Down the
steps, the corner doesn't cut them apart. Crowded close enough,
unspoken words separated by a space, a beat, not commas or
question marks or any other form of punctuation. Steps move to
parks, then to cars, then to murals, soccer games, laughter, and
while commitments call, meeting again is agreed. Engines start.
Trains arrive. Smiles still sweep across distancing faces.

eeeeeoeeeete

erika gisela abad merced, phd is a writer, poet, and budding essayist.
You can find her work in such outlets as The Feminist Wire, Mujeres de Maiz, Skin
to Skin, Outrider Review, and MujeresTalk.

alex garcia is a twenty-year-old transgender, demiromantic, demisexual
freelance illustrator. More of faer art can be found at alexpgarcia.tumblr.com.

Mai

: Books”

eel

roe.

Nn,

a boy named thomas

by evelyn deshane

Introduction: The Transgender Narrative

When | wrote my first book, I was a girl writing about boys.

When | started the second book, | was a boy writing about boys.

By the time | had finished the second, | had already turned one of
my “strong female characters” into a man. Herein lies the first problem
of the transgender narrative: you make life imitate art and then imitate
it back again. Like an ouroboros, there is no beginning or end in sight.
| do not know where the change quite happened for me, the moment
of revelation or epiphany where | realized who | truly was. But | can tell
you two things that | know for sure: | am a writer, and my gender has
been the best story I've ever told.

In that second book, it was as if | recognized the signs and
symptoms of that transgender character like an overarching godhead,
and | did not want him to suffer anymore. So my character Jasmine
became Hunter in a flick of a sentence. From she to he and then
everyone was addressing him without qualms or discussion, like some
wonderful utopian future. Except that | had set the story in New Jersey
in 2006 and gay marriage wasn't even legal yet. The character Hunter
was pregnant, too. He was eight months into having his first baby and
in the middle of a kitchen making tea when |, as the writer, decided that
he was going to utter the words to his husband, “I need you to call me
Hunter."

Of course, Thomas, the husband, did so without question.

| had changed something so fundamental about these
characters. At least, that’s what | first thought. By the time | got to the
end of this book, | realized that changing Jasmine to Hunter was as
simple as changing he to she or the other way around. It was language.
It was perception. Like the book | was writing, our gender was a story
we told ourselves every day. We could wake up, decide to make tea,
and then suddenly realize we were someone else.

These were my characters, and for a while, they were my legacy.

The Story of A Story

When | was eighteen, | wrote this really long story staring
Thomas and his previous lover Bernard, Then | posted it on the internet
like a fool.

Technically, the work is fan fiction, but | changed the names and
set it in an Alternative Universe from the initial “canon” of the fandom.
For those readers unaware of fandom terms, the easiest correlation for

183@00

what | did is Fifty Shades of Grey. That book started as a contemporary
Alternative Universe fan fiction of Stephen Meyers’ vampire world,
which E. L. James eventually made into her own empire by changing
some names and details. That is basically all there is to my book, too
(except without sparkling vampires, | promise). My story is just as long
the Fifty Shades Saga and filled with badly written sex scenes, but with
two men instead of a problematic BDSM. Though | had been writing
for a long time before | posted my story, fan fiction allowed me to
experience things | never had before and also gave me things | never
expected.

When | would read books (or watch TY or listen to music) as a
child, | would imagine myself inside those worlds and in the characters’
minds. Reading Harry Potter, | wanted to be him and not Hermione.
Instead of Lucy or Susan from The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe,
| was Edmund (even if he kind of ruined everything). Instead of Lisa
Simpson, | was Bart. You get the picture—| wanted to be a boy. This
was obvious to me, even if | had no concept of transgender life yet.
| didn’t even know little girls could “grow up” to be boys. So | settled
for something in between. | pretended to be a boy as | wrote novels
as a child on loose-leaf paper. | scoured baby name books for really
good boys’ names. | became Duncan and Tucker and Jamison and Ned,
before realizing that | really liked the name Thomas. He would become
my best character, the one! would write about the most and put all my
time and energy into. | loved my characters more than myself and the
life | was living, It's really not as sad as it sounds, This was what | did
instead of video games, instead of going out late at night and partying
with friends. | sat on my computer or outside with my notebooks and
| created characters. When | realized that by writing | could escape my
own psyche and whatever discomfort there, then | knew | could be free.
That was all that really mattered.

Fan fiction allowed me to have an audience and, therefore,
validation. | was able to spend time in a fictitious world that | loved

so much, and because of the characters attached
to the writing, people were interested

in reading what | produced. After Iam a

years of struggling to get people

to pay attention to the person on Ir say ing
| knew | was—the writer more

than anything else—! finally

had readers. | could be a novice of: een the.
writer at seventeen with limited hen st or I’ve
experience outside of my own

notebook, but suddenly, | was ever to d.

getting comments on my work, Praise.
19

Elated people waiting for updates, for my next projects, begging
me for aspecific storyline. The shows and the universe that | disappeared
into when | was growing up suddenly opened up ta me like a wide plain,
a large berth, that | could insert myself into as a creator and live there
until | wanted to come out. When | went to university and didn’t have to
worry about the all-day commitment of high school, | disappeared into
fandom and writing even more.

This feeling of entering a world in fiction is what Matt Hills calls
“hyperdiegesis.” The late nights | spent drinking coffee until five in the
morning and writing fan fiction while watching fan videos is what Henry
Jenkins calls “participatory culture.” Fan writing, in academic terms, is
called "textual poaching," according to Jenkins. He’s written quite a
few well-received books on the topic. The academic language of fan
fiction, especially since Comic Cons and nerd culture are becoming
more accepted in everyday parlance, is now respected, But none of this
mattered to me. | liked fan fiction, and slash fan fiction at that, where |
could focalize myself behind a male character having sex with another
guy. The whole process was like discovering | was gay. My “coming out”
became penning these stories and then posting them online. The fact
that people were responding to what ! wrote was even better. It was
like, dare | use the stereotypical trope, looking in a mirror,

So | wrote this really long story. It clocked it at around 500k first
draft, and really, | know it's probably not thot amazing. (I'd like to think
it was at least better than Fifty Shades, but who knows? | was barely
eighteen when | wrote it, and we all know what we were like at that
age), But people read it. People stil read it. | get comments on it to this
day. l've had people tell me that reading this book changed their life.
They've drawn me pictures from it and written me letters about it. I've
even seen some tattoos from this work floating around online and fan
fiction from my original fan fiction itself. Talk about an ouroboros! Even
thinking about this sometimes feels like falling down a rabbit hole.

But the thing is, | got so attached to this story, to the boy named
Thomas who | lived my life behind, that | thought | was him.

A New Start

Flash forward to a few years later. I've graduated from university
with a degree in English Literature and Gender Studies. | have stopped
writing fan fiction and removed myself from the community that used to
embrace me because of that overwhelmingly popular fan fiction. | also
stopped eating meat, in hopes to change something more substantial
about my life. | became vegan a month later and would stay a very strict
vegan for quite some time.

By doing all of these things to change my life, whether | realized

20

it or not, | had been trying to mimic my character's life. Even coming
out as a lesbian ended up being a strange, backwards attempt to view
myself as gay—just like Thomas did. | realize now I'm bi, but being with
men at this time in my life was too hard. | wanted to be a man so badly
that | could not be around them. | couldn't even allow myself to write
about men getting dressed and shaving without wanting to sink back
into my dorm room and write until five in the morning while listening to
fan videos. The only way | could leave the safe space of the internet was
to transform my everyday life into something with purpose. Hence the
veganism and my sudden proclivity towards feminism and protests. |
had to live with meaning if | was not going to write books anymore.
Then | dated this woman, She was trans, She showed
me Julia Serano, queer politics, and some really
good movies. But most importantly, she
showed me it was actually possible

for me to grow Gender up to be a man
and not some was whatever strange fiction.
So | shaved my head full
of hair while story I wanted in my mom's

kitchen over a long weekend,

listening to to tell myself that the Rocky
Horror OST day. That was a:

To Break Free”

picked a new who I became. name and

reserved my r middie one for
that character | And nothing WasS loved so much.

| went shopping, permanent. bought a binder,
and wore way too much plaid. If
| couldn't write fan fiction, then | would try
to create myself. If coming out of my stories was too
painful, then | was going to try and turn the everyday world into a story.

It more or less worked.

Months into my transition, | was still building scenes
and scenarios in the back of my mind, thinking of dialogue, and
working towards a new book. Where ! had once thought | wrote
because | needed to experience being male in some way, | soon
realized that writing was so much more than that. Writing was
what | had been doing since | was very young, no matter the body
| was in. Writing was the only thing | really ever wanted to do.

So | started to write a sequel to the original fan fiction that got
50 popular. One where Thomas got back with his old lover Bernard, got
his best friend pregnant, and decided to raise the baby anyway. Drama!
But it was queer drama, deliberately so, because these people were
gay, in a polyamorous relationship, and by the end, Jasmine had

a1

become Hunter, so it was really three men raising a daughter
together. And during the winter | wrote it, | realized something so much
more profound than the first book. The first one had made me feel free,
and | had tried to cling onto that feeling like a life raft, when feelings are
so ephemeral.

But when | made Jasmine into Hunter, | realized | could make
myself out of the person | had changed myself into. From a girl writing
about boys to a boy writing sequels, | could suddenly become something
else. A chimera, a conduit. Whatever it was called in a political sense—
bigender, agender, genderqueer—t don't really know, | realized | was
only what | appeared to be, only whatever | created, and only in that
particular moment in time.

Gender was, at least to me, whatever story | wanted to tell myself
that day. That was who | became. And nothing, not even Thomas and
his world, was permanent.

Self-Published Identity

In spite of writing this long book and its sequel, | feel as if | have
never been published. But | know that's not quite right: I've been self-
published. And do you know what? Self-publishing was better than
surgery. It was better than any hormone or drug that made me into
my characters. Because all it took for me to change was to finish the
second book. As soon as | finished, though | had been living as a man
for a year at that point, | realized that | was no longer that person,

| was a writer, That was it.

| eat what my characters eat. | dress how they dress. It does not
matter if my character is a trans man, a lesbian, or a fox that talks too
much. | live through my characters’ minds, and | will continue to live
through the characters that | have come to love more than my own
skin.

The truth is that | can’t just be one person. | want to be all of
them, | got so consumed by the transgender narrative and the signs
that | thought pointed to a larger meaning and purpose in my life. But
transitioning never helped me. | knew what it was like to be a guy, but
it wasn't that over-the-moon elation | saw other people experiencing
after they had transitioned. | knew what it was like to be a guy, but that
guy was Thomas. And to a certain degree, | knew what it was like to be
Hunter. But after | finished the book, like all books, | woke up the next
day as a different person.

It took a while to undo what | had done. Coming out is hard, but
try coming out and going back without erasing what has just happened.
| didn’t want people to think that my prior gender identity had been
a “mistake” or a “fake.” Even though | didn't want to walk around

22

anymore and pretend to be Thomas, that didn’t mean that he wasn't
still a huge part of me. it doesn’t mean that the person | am now is any
better than him, either. So often transgender identity, like sexuality, is
considered to be a straight line. A narrative with a beginning, middle,
and end. But | know from a visceral reality lived in fiction that nothing is
ever black or white. Everything is divided into chapters and vignettes; it
moves back and forth and always, always requires revisions. Even here,
've rewritten these words so many times my fingers bleed. Gender is
always a good story, but I'm trying to make it my mission to tell even
better ones, beyond the massive tomes of my youth.

To this day, people still have no idea who | am. My by-lines and
pen names change all the time, more than the ones on my new birth
certificate. But that's okay. I'm okay with the weird anomaly of gender
and the change that comes from it now. Never being pinned down
means I'll always have more books to write. More than anything else,
that’s the ending | could have hoped for.

evelyn deshane isa first year PhD student at Waterloo University, examining
fan studies and transgender identity online. Evelyn has written articles on
transgender issues for The Atlantic, Plenitude Magazine, Hoax Zine, and the
forthcoming anthology Trans On the Internet. Read mare of Evelyn's work at
paintitback.tumblr.com.

on circumambience

by kevin melellan
| don't miss him

rather the zinc taste
his zinc taste

which is also to say

my saliva is far away
from his heart

kevin melellan is the author of Tributary, and the chapbooks Shoes on a
Wire - runner-up for the 2012 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry — and Round Trip, a
collaborative series of poems with numerous women poets. You can find more
of Kevin's work at tiny.cc/kmpoetry.

@2zs

the best day

by claudie arseneault

Varden remembered the previous night spent staring at the ceiling
of his tiny room, too excited to sleep. He couldn't wait for today’s ceremony
and wasn’t worried in the least about the test. The Firelord had brought
him this far, and they would nat let him down. Varden would become a full-
fledged priest of Keroth, the first isbari to achieve this position in Myria, and
no one could stop him. It would be the best day of his life. Every time he
closed his eyes he imagined the ceremonial chamber and pictured himself
enduring the trial without wavering, and his heart sped up with pride.

It kept him from sleeping, too, so Varden had fallen back on his
secret passion to kill time. He'd picked a bit of charcoal from his fireplace
and started sketching with it, filling sheet after sheet with quick drawings.

The priests wouldn't believe the number of charcoal drawings he’d
whipped up through the years, then thrown into the flames. Men holding
hands, men kissing, men naked or dressed. Hours passed as he let his
imagination drive the piece of charcoal, blackening his fingers as he traced
sculpted abs. This art was a prayer to Keroth, who had created fire’s beautiful
dance, and Varden threw every sheet into his room's small fire with thankful
words.

He tried to remember the contentment those words had brought
him on the following morning.

Now that hot caals lay before him in a long stretch, waiting for his
bare feet, fear had replaced pride in the quick thumps of his heart. The
easy confidence from his previous night had vanished. Varden's insides
squirmed, and he couldn't help but gaze at the majestic ceremonial hall.
He wished for the umpteenth time that another isbari was in the room
with him. Only myrian faces stared back. Pale white, thin and angular, too
often blond. Varden longed for a friend with brown skin and thick dark hair,
someone who understood what it was like to evolve in a myrian world and
defy their expectations. He knew better than to ask. Isbari lived in chains or
in fenced neighborhoods. Only Keroth's good will had brought him to this
temple today to face the last trial before priesthood,

That, and Varden's determination. More than twenty myrians stared
at him now, hoping he would fail, praying he would burn himself and be
rejected by Keroth. Varden raised his chin, puffed his chest. They did not
understand. Keroth burned in him already, the god’s energy wrapping like
protective hands around his heart, their warmth spreading for head to toe,
dwarfing the room's stifling heat. Varden smiled, then took his first step on
the glowing coals.

The rocks were cool under his skin. He set his second foot down.
The coals dug in his soles, pushing against muscle, but they did not hurt.
He took another step. Slow and steady. Many acolytes ran over the coals,
hurried as their feet sizzled, and held back tears against the pain. They were
still ordained. After all, they had crossed the burning stretch despite their
tears. Varden straightened and almost laughed. He continued forward at a
slow and ceremonial pace, the frowns of consternation feeding his gleeful
pride. Here was an isbari teenager, shunned as inferior, mocked by the
others acolyte, crossing the coals as only High Priests did. Slow and steady,

240

the glowing racks cool under his soles,

When he arrived at the other end, he bowed to the masters. Hiding
his pride proved a greater challenge than the walk. He kept his head bent,
waiting for the official declaration.

“Acolyte Varden Daramond, we welcome you into Keroth’s warm
embrace. Here are your robes.”

Varden ignored the palpable irritation in the High Priest's voice
and straightened up. Sixteen and already taller than him. Not by much,
but enough to look down as he extended his arms and received the burnt
orange robes.

“Thank you, High Priest.”

He said it with all the reverence in the world, like he hadn't heard
their disappointment, like he wasn’t aware of how much they hated him.
He did not limp as he walked to the line of newly-ordained priests, for he
had not suffered the slightest of wounds. They shuffled aside, leaving hima
slightly bigger gap than most, and Varden thought there was a new layer to
their disdain, A small film of fear and envy. The young priest smiled through
the rest of the common

Twenty myrians kept glancing his way, like they couldn't quite believe
what they had seen, Twenty minds in which it was slowly sinking than an
isbari, the scum of the world, the lowly slave, had excelled at this ceremony
and was more fully embraced by Keroth than they could ever dream to be.

This is it, Varden thought. The best day of his life.

Little did he know it was just a beginning.

Newly-ordained priests and acolytes were always allowed a free
afternoon after the ceremony. Deer was grilled on large grates in the
gardens, excited teenagers chatted under ancient trees, and older priests
discussed performances in low voices, already setting their sights on
candidates for higher positions. Varden strolled through the gardens, aware
of the occasional stare he still drew. No one called for him, however, He
might no longer be mocked, but that didn’t make him a friend.

He stayed in the main garden for an hour, more out of duty than
anything else. He had just been ordained, after all, and he should attend
these events. But after spending an afternoon staring at boys his age cross
a path of coals, flames sometimes licking their acolyte rabes, the urge to
be alone was strong. The intensity of the trial—the risk of deep burns and
failure—brought a strange vulnerability to their expressions. It stirred a
new kind of feeling inside Varden, different than the urge to prove them
wrong, to be the best of them. It made him want to take their hands and tell
them it would be okay, to wrap his arms around their bodies, to feel them
under his touch.

One, in particular. He was tall and muscular, with large hands and
fuller lips, a healthy tan to his skin rather than the sick pale myrians loved.
Varden often found himself thinking of these hands on his hips, of their
bodies pressed together, of the pink lips running across his darker neck.
And when that happened the world grew hotter than any of Keroth’s trial,
an unbearable heat that dried his mouth and dizzied him, and he knew he
had to escape. Find a corner until it passed, until the pull below vanished.

Now would be a great time to do so. Varden swallowed hard,
snatched a hot charcoal from under a fire and snuck back inside the temple.
Sketching always helped assuage desire. A few more personal prayers

25

would help him. He was looking forward to another drawing session when
his name carried through the open halls.

“Warden? Varden!”

Varden stopped, surprised at the warmth in the other's voice, the
deference and awe. He turned to see Miles cross the hall toward him with a
wide smile that lit his features and stretched his full lips. He held his newly-
acquired robes through chubby fingers as he walked, thick legs pumping
with every stride, Miles had been the first to cross the coals earlier.He had
done so at a brisk pace and with an occasional yelp.

“Were you leaving the gathering so soon?”

At another time Varden might have told him off, but today had been
great, and he felt like he could take on the world. Besides, he rather liked
Miles. He was quiet and kind, had never mocked him, and slipped smiles his
way whenever others weren't looking.

“Crowds tire me," Varden answered.

It was a well-known fact he often kept to himself. Miles didn’t seem
at all surprised, He put his fingers on Varden’s forearms and a strange blush
reached his cheeks.

"| was wondering if perhaps you wanted to walk? With me, deeper
in the gardens.”

The slight touch sent a jolt through Varden, and his answer shot out
before he could think about it. “I-yeah.”

Mile's delighted grin was reward enough. As they headed off, Varden
couldn't help but study Miles again-an artist's habit. Broad shoulders
stretched the priest robes a little, and again at belly’s height. He took small
strides, waving fattened hands about as he spoke, Deep blue eyes kept
returning to Varden, like they couldn't get enough. They moved through
the large gardens into the less cultured forest behind. There was still a clear
trail, and when he paid attention, Varden could tell where trees had been
cut and others planted.

He wasn't really paying attention. Miles’ hand kept brushing against
his, each little touch leaving him craving for more, The dizzying possibility
that these might not be accidents made it hard to focus on Miles’ words.
Varden forced himself to concentrate.

“You were fantastic this morning,” Miles was saying. “So powerful,
walking down that lane. It was like ... like Keroth had lit a fire so strong
inside you, you couldn't feel the heat under your feet. It was beautiful.” His
voice turned a little raw as he said the last word. Like he’d wanted to say
something else altogether but couldn't push himself to. Miles cleared it with
a small cough. “Oh! Look ahead. | love this place.”

They had arrived at a small clearing, with the occasional branch of
trellis jutting out of the ground and arcing overhead. Almost like a gazebo
but more discreet, Strong vines climbed the trellis, obscuring the white
wood underneath. No, not vines, Varden realized. Fireflowers had bloomed
all along the plants’ stems, starting a foot of the ground and all the way to the
tip of the high arcs, The flowers had earned their name because of the shape
of their delicate petals, their deep orange color, and the fact they bloomed
only on the hottest summer days. The last week had been a particularly
heavy heatwave, and now the clearing was sprinkled with orange sparkles.
Varden’s breath caught in his throat and his fingers tightened on the piece
of enol he'd snatched. His urge to draw was getting stronger by the
second.

26

“Warden...”

Miles had stopped walking as they entered the area. His intense
blue eyes stayed on Varden until they caught his gaze. They made his priest
robes hot and stuffy. Had the day grown a couple of degrees hotter?

“y-yeah?" Varden managed to ask.

Words had always come easily to him, but all of a sudden they
became the hardest thing. Not for Miles, though. He seemed to have the
opposite problem.

"There's something I've wanted to do for a while, but | really needed
to ask you first. | could never quite gather the courage, but after the
ceremony earlier | just couldn't wait anymore.” He stepped closer, wringing
his hands. When he noticed this, he stopped and shook his fingers, as if to
dispel the nervousness. Then he raised his head, licked his lips and took a
deep breath. “I think you're wonderful. Like ... really, really great? Not just as
a person. | mean, hum... Can | kiss you?”

Varden froze. He couldn't quite believe what he’d just heard. It had
to be the deafening blood thumping in his ears. Yet he nodded a little. Just
in case. Miles stretched closer, his eyes wide like he wasn’t sure this was
happening either. Their lips touched. Just a light contact, a possibility of
more

Varden’s heart raced. His hand reached for Miles’ shoulder and he
pulled him closer. His lips were soft and wet and warm, end though it lasted
only a second the kiss made him dizzy. Varden ran his fingers down Miles’
chest and belly, the forms round, not sculpted at all. He wasn't like all his
sketches. He was fuller. Less ideal and at the same time way more perfect.

There was a hand on his hip. Not the large and long hand he'd so
often dreamed of, strong and controlling. Miles’ hands were short and
chubby, and his fingers drew Varden close with timid tenderness. It was
better, so much better, to feel his arms wrap around him, to be held like he
was the most precious gift around, wanted but unexpacted. They parted
and Miles didn’t quite let go. They hadn't even really kissed-no tongue, just
their lips pressed together-but Varden's legs were ready to give in. Anew
fire had been lit inside, and he didn’t know how to control that one yet.
Miles sketched a smile, looking up at Varden with wide eyes,

“| Know it’s complicated, but | want to know you. To be with you.”

Varden struggled for words and instead gripped Miles’ hand. They
didn’t even know each other, but Varden’s heart threatened to burst with
hope. His prayers had been answered. He pressed the charcoal into Miles’

alm.
e “Keep this in your room, and paper. When | can I'll come, and I'll
show you something important to me.”

Miles’ incredible smile was all the answer he needed, The young
priest glowed from inside, and just seeing him like this made Varden feel
lighter, He could've stepped on thousands of burning coals right then,
looking at the sweet grin, and never felt a thing.

sees ee eee

claudie arseneaullt is a young French Canadian asexual writer. She
spends her days finishing her Immunology Master, and her nights writing
queer science fiction and fantasy. She is the author of Vira! Airwaves, a brand
new solarpunk novel. Read more at claudiears.wordpress.com.

ar

the sorceress who
had no heart

by coral moore

Unegen raised her bow and nocked an arrow. Beneath her,
Atlan’s legs churned at a canter. The mare had a smooth gait, but
Unegen was still jarred with every stride. She concentrated on rolling
with the motion, and when she was satisfied that they were as moving
as one, she drew back the bowstring with her thumb. She adjusted for
their movement and the wind, and then she loosed. Not her best shot
ever. She knew that as soon as the arrow left her fingers. Still, she hit
the target just a bit off center.

As she slowed the mare, her brother Oyugun pulled up alongside,
his long hair flowing out behind him. “I think you're better than me now."

She smiled up at her eldest brother. His face was tanned dark
from long days in the sun. “You could beat that shot.”

Fine lines around his eyes deepened with his answering smile.
“Perhaps.”

She stroked Altan’s neck. “Thank you for teaching me.” The other
hunters had laughed when she said she wanted to learn the craft, but
not Oyugun.

The mirth fell away from his face. “It's been my pleasure. I've
never trained anyone who tries as hard as you do.”

“| don't have the luxury of giving up.” She gave Altan another pat,
no longer able to meet Oyugun’s eyes. They both knew that sooner or
later she would have to give up the hunt.

For a long moment, the only sound was the hissing of the dry
grass around them and the passage of their horses through it. The
campfire stories of sorcerers who came for disobedient children in
the night didn't scare her nearly as much as the prospect of losing the
freedom she loved.

When Oyugun finally spoke, his voice was low and soothing, as if
he was talking to a skittish horse. “Father wants to see all of us.”

Unegen turned back to her brother, making sure her face
betrayed none of her turbulent emotions. He led the way into the
sprawling encampment.

“Did he say what he wanted?” Unegen asked as they approached
a group of horses grazing in an area of younger grass. They handed off
their horses to a pair of boys minding the herd for cooling out.

Oyugun shook his head and continued on to their father’s yurt
at the center of the camp. He ducked to enter the low doorway of the
dwelling and waited for her to enter before lowering the door flap.

28

Unegen wrinkled her nose as the faint scent of kumis surrounded her,
sour after the fresh air outside. Her father rarely indulged in fermented
milk unless celebrating or mourning. She wondered which occasion this
might be.

Her other four brothers were already kneeling before their
father’s chair. The gnarled wooden chair, passed down for generations
from father to son, was the one piece of furniture in the entire camp.
Oyugun winked at Unegen before taking his place at the far left of the
line.

Unegen moved to the right side and knelt. She tucked the front
edge of her hunting deel under her knees so as not to wrinkle the heavy
fabric. She clasped her hands before her, bowed her head, and waited.

A whisper of slippers over a woven mat announced the clan
chiefs entrance, but none of the children moved so much as a finger.
When the chief of the larudi finally stood before them, he clapped his
hands, All six siblings looked up as one, Unegen's father looked slowly
over the line of his offspring, starting with Oyugun and working his way
toward Unegen. He smiled broadly, deep lines creasing his weathered
face.

“| have said since the day the first of you were born that my
children are my life. For this reason | have kept all of you close, probably
for longer than | should have. The time has come for you to begin your
own families.”

One of her brothers muttered something that drew a sharp look
from her father. Unegen swallowed. She'd been dreading this day for
years, Her father indulged her interest in what were traditionally men’s
pursuits, but her husband likely wouldn't.

"As is our way, my sons will find wives from outside, Oyugun, |
trust you to lead your brothers on a hunt for suitable brides.”

“Of course, Father. What of Unegen?"

"She will remain here with me. | couldn't bear to be parted from
all of you at once. Find her a husband in your travels as well. Bring her
aman with a backbone or she'll trample him.”

Her brothers and her father all laughed. Unegen’s cheeks heated.
“If you truly love me, you will bring me no man at all.”

Her father's face became serious. He stepped closer to her and
cradled her chin in his calloused hand. “My fierce little fox. | only want
you to be happy.”

“Then let me stay by your side forever. | want no husband, no
children. | want to ride and hunt, as you do.”

“You will grow out of that, and you will thank me for ensuring
you didn't turn into an old unmarried aunt in the meantime.”

Unegen scowled, but she didn't argue further. She knew he
wouldn't change his mind, no more than she would.

Oyugun broke the tension with a hearty chuckle. “| will find her

30

a husband as pliable as the high grass in the summer wind. That is the
only way he'll survive her wrath.”

The men laughed again, but Unegen didn’t. She clung to the
hope that, in the excitement of finding himself and his brothers brides,
Oyugun would forget all about finding her a husband.

Moons passed into seasons and summer came around again,
and there was no word from Unegen’s brothers. Her father sank into
despair. He sent scouts in all directions to search for them, heedless of
the cost.

The clan began to suffer from the lack of men. For the first time in
her life, the other hunters seemed pleased to have Unegen join them to
fill their depleted ranks. She worked hard alongside the other hunters to
fill the near-empty smokers, and in so doing gained the respect of men
who had once scorned her desire to learn from them. Still, every dusk
that fell without the return of her brothers brought further unease.

Unegen desperately wanted to join the searches, but her father
would hear no word of her leaving. He shouted that she couldn't possibly
survive an enemy that had bested her five brothers, and perhaps he
was right. Regardless, she packed secretly and headed off one night
with only Atlan for companionship.

Unegen rode her mare over a wide stone bridge to the Palace
of the Seven Waterfalls. She had followed the trail of her five missing
brothers from the dry steppes into the verdant foothills, and now finally
to the cold severity of the mountains. The merchants and townsfolk
nearby all told the same story. A sorceress had come down from the
high reaches and conquered the palace in less than a day. Her brothers
had last been seen within the walls, wooing the old king’s handful of
daughters. No one had heard from them since.

As Unegen approached the gate, the uneasy silence of the place
sent a shiver through her. Atlan’s hooves clomping rhythmically over the
bridge was the only sound. She couldn't say exactly what bothered her
until she glanced over the barren cliffs to either side of the palace walls.
The waterfalls that lent their name to the palace were silent, stopped up
so that the naked, water-smoothed stone face was visible. The amount
of power required to halt the fall of that much water staggered the
mind.

Unegen considered turning around, She could go back to her
father and tell him what had happened. He would raise an army, and
they would stand a better chance than one girl on her own,

Would they, though?

What chance did an army have against a sorceress? Even if her
father raised a thousand men, would that be enough?

As she continued to ride forward, a row of statues came into view

31

in the courtyard, and they decided her. At the very front was a statue
she recognized as Oyugun, and her stomach clenched. She wanted to
cry out, to run to him and hug him just to feel him in her arms. He
wouldn't hug her back, though. She drew a shaking breath and kept
riding past them.

Oyugun stood frozen, having been turned to stone in the act
of loosing an arrow from his longbow—the string still hadn't returned
to the resting position, Neither the arrow nor his target was anywhere
to be seen. What Oyugun aimed for, he hit. That his attacker wasn't in
view meant the rumors had been true: the sorceress couldn't be killed
by conventional means.

Her brothers stood in a semicircle, shielding five young women,
also stone, fram whatever had attacked them. They had been trying to
escape through the gate, but the sorceress had trapped them all with
her spell.

“You've wandered far from where it's safe, little duckling.” A
warm honey voice poured from the palace and smothered Unegen.

Atlan stopped abruptly, her hooves mired in something Unegen
couldn't see. The mare's ears laid back. Her muscles strained as she
tried to work herself free.

“Please don't hurt my horse,” Unegen managed to gasp out.

The constrictive hold loosened somewhat. “Why don’t you beg
for your own life?”

She glanced over the darkened palace windows but couldn't find
the source of the voice. “I'm ready to ride the winds with my ancestors.”

The force binding Unegen fell away. “Leave the horse and
continue forward. Try to escape and | will kill you both before you make
it two steps.”

Unegen dismounted and led Atlan to a patch of grass deeper
within the courtyard, She continued toward the palace doors, checking

each window as she moved closer.

The doors were fashioned of the largest pieces of wood Unegen
had ever seen. Ornate carvings depicted the waterfalls that should have
surrounded the palace. When she was several paces from the doors,
they swung inward. The sunlight only penetrated a few hand spans into
the interior before being absorbed by the darkness.

“Come inside.”

The voice startled her. She hadn't even realized she'd stopped.
Getting her feet moving again was easier than it should have been,
given the situation, Once she was inside, the outer doors closed with a
heavy thump, and she was submerged in blackness.

Her breaths came faster. For what felt like a very long time,
nothing happened. Something touched her face, and she flinched. A
sound like low chanting brushed her ears, but she couldn't make sense
of the words. Then light blossomed, so slowly at first that Unegen was
sure it was her imagination.

Reclining before her was the most singularly beautiful person
Unegen had ever seen. Long dark hair was piled atop the woman's head
in intricate braids. Her cheekbones formed high angles that accentuated
her skin, which was as golden and burnished as the dawn.

“Closer,” the sorceress purred.

Unegen stumbled forward and ended up on her knees beside
the sorceress. The scent of bluebeard flowers filled her head.

A gust of wind removed Unegen’s hat and blew her hair back
from her face. The sorceress reached to caress her cheek. “Why have
you come, duckling?”

The truth almost came pouring out, but at the last moment
Unegen caught her traitorous tongue. “I've heard stories of sorcerers,
but | wanted to see one for myself.”

The sorceress gripped Unegen’s chin and pulled her closer, close

safes

enough that Unegen could see her reflection in the night-dark eyes.

“You are a brave one.” The warm wash of the sorceress's breath
feathered her cheeks.

Unegen didn’t feel very brave with her heart thumping in her
throat like a frigntened hare. “Thank you.”

“Don't you have a husband to keep you out of trouble? You seem
a likely age.”

“| don’t ever want to marry.”

One corner of the sorceress’s mouth lifted. “Neither do |.” She
released her grip on Unegen's chin. “You amuse me. | will keep you as a
pet until you cease to.”

Unegen knelt in the front room of the palace, trying very hard
not to move. Before her, the sorceress lounged in an ornate chair with
a leg draped over one gilded arm, her embroidered red skirt gathered
above her knee. She could sit that way for hours, her unfocused gaze
searching for something beyond the world that Unegen could see. The
moment Unegen moved, the sorceress would come out of her trance
and ask a question as if they'd been deep in conversation rather than
sitting in silence for half the day.

The question was usually absurd, and often impossible, but the
answer wasn't important. The sorceress enjoyed watching her squirm
more than anything else.

Her calf twitched. Unegen let out a slow breath and wiggled her
toes to try to relax her cramped muscles. She had been in the palace
nearly a full moan cycle and hadn't made any progress in freeing her
brothers. If the campfire stories were to be believed, the only way the
sorceress could be defeated was to find where she'd hidden her heart.

Whenever she was left alone, Unegen searched for the
sorceress’s heart. The palace had a seemingly unending number of
rooms and alcoves, all silent and cold as the coming winter. She looked
under lavish, empty beds and in cabinets that bore the disintegrating
clothing of the former residents, but she found no sign of a heart. She
began to wonder if the key to defeating a sorcerer had been made up
or was a symbol of something else.

She finally gave in to the building discomfort in her leg and
shifted to sitting cross-legged.

The sorceress blinked. “Have you ever been in love?"

Unegen folded her hands in her lap, trying to hide how uneasy
the question made her; that would only make it worse. “My father
believes love is a conceit of the village-born with no place among the
clans."

The sorceress tapped her lacquered nails against the arm of the
chair. “| didn’t ask what your father thought.”

“I'm not interested in becoming someone's wife, So it's never

34

been a consideration.”

“Also not what | asked.”

Unegen looked down at her hands. Her nails were cut short and
square because long nails weren't practical when knuckle-deep in guts.
Why did she suddenly have the urge to grow them? "I love to hunt.”

The sorceress didn’t respond until Unegen lifted her gaze and
their eyes met. “Tell me.”

“| love to feel the wind on my face as | chase down my prey.”
Unegen paused, breathless. “| love the thrill when my arrow strikes
true.”

“And when the helpless animal falls to the ground, do you love
that too?”

Unegen’s cheeks heated. “I feel no shame for the lives I've taken.”

“Yet you judge me for the same. | can see the disgust when you
look at me.”

“(kill so that my clan may survive.”

The sorceress stood, the lines of her body taut. Power crackled
around her. “The king of this place murdered the only person | ever
loved when she wouldn't agree to wed his awful son.”

Unegen recoiled when the sorceress's emotions pressed against
her, Loss. Loneliness. Despair. So much pain that she couldn't draw a
breath.

"That is what love is." The sorceress's voice echoed through the
room, rattling the furnishings.

A tiny noise squeezed through Unegen's constricted throat. The
idea that the pathetic sound might be her last act shamed her far mare
than the fact that she'd failed to see her brothers safely home. Then,
without warning, the oppressive darkness lifted as if someone had
thrown open the windows to let in the sun. Unegen collapsed, gasping
for breath.

The sorceress turned and stalked toward the door, fists curled
at her sides,

Unegen watched the sorceress's retreating form from the floor.
She'd never considered that the sorceress might have a reason for her
rampage. “I'm sorry he broke your heart.”

The sorceress paused. “Because of him | have no heart.” Fer
shoulders lifted and dropped with a heavy sigh before she continued
on, leaving Unegen broken and alone.

Unegen didn't see the sorceress far two days. She spent most of
her time in the courtyard, staring at the statues of her brothers. Every
time she focused on Oyugun’s face, tears threatened. He always knew
what to do next.

She'd searched every dusty corner of the palace, but somehow
she knew this was the last place the sorceress would have brought her
heart. Unegen had failed to rescue her brothers, and she was out of

35

ideas,

When the sorceress finally returned, her fine dress was wrinkled
and soiled, She wandered to the rock wall where Unegen sat and settled
next to her. She glanced over the statues. “They were trying to protect
the king’s daughters from my wrath, which is why they're still alive.”

Unegen swallowed. “Then why not let them go?”

“If | undo the spell, they will probably try to fill me with arrows
again.”

“But they can't kill you, can they?”

“No, but arrows hurt.” The sorceress shrugged. “It’s easier to
leave them like this.”

“Surely they have families that miss them?"

The sorceress turned toward Unegen, her dark eyes narrowing.
“They didn't consider my family before they tried to turn me into a
porcupine.”

Unegen glanced at Oyugun. He focused on his target,
dispassionate and calm. No, he wouldn't have considered the sorceress's
family, or even her humanity. In that moment all that mattered was the
arrow and the target. Didn't that make him the same as the sorceress?

Unegen looked back at the sorceress. “Where is your family?”

“A long way from here. | was born where the earth ends, far
beyond the steppes.”

“The giant sea of salt?”

‘The very one. I'm surprised you know of it.”

"My father saw it once. He likes to tell the story.”

“When | left to train in the mountains, | was sure I'd never see
home again.” The sorceress gazed out over the grasslands far below
them. Her lips were held in a tight line as if to hold back sharing more.

“| don’t think | could make that choice.”

"| didn’t have a choice, not then. Powerful men wanted to use my
talent, and my family was poor.”

“Will you go back to see them now?"

The sorceress shut her eyes briefly, lashes casting long shadows
over her cheeks. “I've become something they wouldn't understand.”

“I'm sure they miss you and would like to see you all the same.”

The sorceress nodded in the direction of the palace. “After this |
would only bring them pain.” Sadness marred the delicate curves of her
face. She fussed with the ruined skirt of her dress.

As Unegen rose to jain the sorceress, a surge of pity bloomed
within her, She couldn't afford to feel sorry for the sorceress, not if she
wanted to find a way to free her brothers. “I'll draw you a bath.”

The sorceress caught Unegen's arm. “Why are you so kind to me?
I've taken you prisoner.” She tilted her head to one side, the fall of her
dark hair stirring in the mountain breeze, vulnerable in a way Unegen
hadn't seen before.

36

Standing so close, Unegen worried the sorceress would pick up
on alie, “There's nowhere else | want to be right now.” Close enough to
the truth, she hoped.

The sorceress sighed and leaned against Unegen’s shoulder, the
heat of her body a decadent counterpoint the cool mountain air. "I'm
sorry | hurt you,”

Unegen suppressed a shiver. The shape of the new plan forming
in her mind disturbed her. In order to find out where the heart was
hidden, she had to make the sorceress trust her. She wrapped an arm
around the sorceress’s back and guided her to the main doors of the
palace.

Atlan was frisky when Unegen went out to feed her and the
other palace horses the following morning. The mare wanted to play,
50 Unegen spent some time with her, chasing her around the gardens,
Frost rimmed all the plants, but it melted at the first touch of sunlight.
After a while, she felt the sorceress gaze on her and glanced back at the
palace. The sorceress stood framed in the arched doorway, her hands
tucked into the sleeves of her floor-length fur-lined coat.

Unegen grabbed a bunch of bluebeard she had gathered and

37

headed toward the palace. When she drew near the sorceress, she
held the flowers out. “They're nearly wilted from the cold. | thought we
should bring them inside.”

Dark eyes appraised Unegen for a long moment, and then the
sorceress reached for the flowers. She buried her nose in the blossoms
and inhaled. A contented hum floated through the air.

“You must be almost as frozen as they are, come inside,” The
sorceress’s voice was deep and velvet. The warm touch of her fingers
closed around Unegen’s chilled hand. Unegen let herself be drawn
through the doorway into the front room. The sorceress turned back
to say something, but Unegen pulled her closer and covered her open
mouth with a kiss.

Unegen had never been kissed. A handful of young boys in her
father’s clan had tried, but most of them ran off when she shoved them
away, and one had left with a black eye. That had discouraged the rest.
She'd never understood the appeal. Until now.

The sorceress tasted of honey and spices from her morning tea.
Her lips were soft and warm, and they yielded at the slightest nudge.
Unegen lost herself in the rhythmic pattern of their mingled breath.
Her heart raced when the sorceress clutched her tighter, their bodies
fitting together as if carved from a single piece of stone,

Like a statue.

Unegen pulled away. Disgust nearly upended her stomach.
How close had she come to betraying her family for a single kiss? The
woman in front of her, no matter how alluring, had turned her brothers
to stone.

The perfume of the bluebeard, crushed between them, was
heavy in the room, a haunting memory of the kiss.

“You've never kissed a woman?” The sorceress finally said into
the silence. She watched Unegen, dark eyes wary.

“I've never kissed anyone.”

"You've got a natural talent, then.” Asmall smile lifted one corner
of the sorceress's mouth.

Unegen remembered the touch of those lips too well, Her cheeks
burned and she looked away, "I'm sorry if | overstepped.”

Petals from the ruined flowers drifted to the tiled floor as the
sorceress stepped closer. “You didn't.” She waited until Unegen met her
eyes again. "Since Erdene was killed, I've had trouble connecting to this
world, I'm thankful you came along when you did.”

Unegen found the sorceress’s direct attention somehow
disconcerting and appealing at the same time. “What was she like? Was
she very beautiful, like you?”

The sorceress smiled. “She would not have said so, but! thought
so." She touched Unegen’s face. Her soft fingers traced the curve of
Unegen’s cheekbone. “Sometimes you remind me of her. She was also

38

a creature too wild for the role she'd been born into.”

Being compared to the sorceress’s dead lover should have been
a boon for Unegen, but an uneasy feeling settled in her gut and wouldn't
let go. “ls that why you've kept me here, because | remind you of her?”

“Perhaps.” The sorceress withdrew her hand. “Does that upset
your"

Unegen clamped her jaw. The idea that the kiss they'd shared
somehow belonged to the other woman gnawed at her until she
couldn't hold the anger back. “Yes.”

The sorceress hesitated for a moment that drew out as she
stared into Unegen’'s eyes. Finally, the sorceress looked away. “You are
free to go whenever you like.”

Unegen reached for the sorceress’s arm. "| don’t want to go.”

“What do you want, then? | have nothing else to give you but
your freedom.”

“| want your heart." Unegen regretted the words as soon as
they'd left her mouth. The truth of them made her eyes sting. She'd
never wanted anything so badly.

The sorceress drew back, her face smoothing to an impassive
mask. “What would you do with such a treasure?"

Unegen struggled for an answer that wouldn't be a lie and also
wouldn't give away her true mission. She leaned closer. “Give it back to
you, So you could see me and not just the ghost of her.”

The sorceress pulled her arm free and turned away. Her
shoulders rose with a sigh. “The ridge above this palace is home to
a temple built when men first ventured into these mountains. They
thought to commune with the gods by proximity to them.” She wrapped
her arms around herself and squeezed. “Within that temple there is a
box that holds the item you seek.”

Unegen had no idea it could be so easy as asking. Joy filled her
to bursting. She could save her brothers after all. She was most of the
way out of the room before she realized she'd taken off without saying
goodbye. When she turned to tell the sorceress she’d be back soon,
there was no one else in the room.

The silent elegance of temple loomed over Unegen as she tried
to regain her breath. Her fingers burned, scraped raw on the climb up
the cliff that had once been a waterfall. The sorceress had stopped the
flow of water further upstream, and as a result, the arms of the river
that had embraced the temple had been turned into muddy ditches.

Unegen waded through one sloppy channel toward the temple.
With each step she thought she might lose her boot in the knee-deep
mire. By the time she made it across, her legs shook with exhaustion
and she was breathing hard again.

Closer to the structure, she could pick out the differences in color

39

and texture of stones that formed complex
designs on the walls of the temple. Gilded
accents at the corners and apex of the roof
glittered in the afternoon sun. Whatever gods
protected this temple were still in residence.
She felt their stares. Unegen held her breath
as she passed through the oversized doorway.

She hesitated just beyond the door
to let her eyes adjust to the dim interior. Small
footprints framed in dust showed the way the
sorceress had gone. Unegen followed the path, the
sound of her boots echoing from the cavernous ceiling. Tiny speckles
of colored light danced over the floor in a strange circular pattern. In
the center of the room, thefootprints abruptly ended.

Unegen looked up.Ten body-lengths above her, a jeweled
object shaped very much like a large bird's egg hung from a rope, and
she knew at once that the sorceress’s heart was locked inside. She
glanced around the room, trying to find something that would help her
reach, but the room was as empty as it was dark.

She squinted up again. The shot would be a simple one. She
could hit a bird in flight at ten times that distance—but could she catch
the egg before it fell? Before she could talk herself out of trying, she
unslung her bow, drew an arrow, and stepped back two paces. Unegen
knocked, drew back the string, and inhaled. She held the breath as she
focused on the rope.

Easy. Just like the target games she'd played with Oyugun. She'd
won those since she'd been able to string her bow alone. Oyugun
often asked her how she could hit the smallest spot exactly every
time, no matter the weather or what was going on around her. She
always shrugged, not because she didn't know, but because the answer
sounded ridiculous, She waited until it felt right.

The instant she loosed she knew the arrow would cleave the
rope exactly as she had pictured it. She lowered her bow and stepped
forward, reaching for the egg with her left hand.

Unegen was certain she was too slow, She didn’t have any idea
what would happen if she dropped the egg, but she didn’t want to find
out. She dropped her bow—the hunters of her clan would have been
horrified—and held out both hands, stretching forward until the weight
of the egg fell solidly into her grasp.

With a sigh, she cradled the egg against her body. The egg was
slightly warm to the touch, and something inside pulsed with a slow
rhythm. She tried to pry the jeweled exterior open, but aside from
irritating her raw fingers on the glass, nothing happened. Unegen held
up the egg. The pulsing grew louder and the pinpoints of light spun
faster, bathing her hands and arms in gold, red, and blue.

40

She bit the inside of her cheek and wondered what to do next.
No idea presented itself, so she tucked the egg into her pouch, collected
her bow, and started for the palace,

On way back she thought of ways to get the egg open. She could
(ry prying or crushing, but that seemed too likely to damage the heart
inside, Unegen couldn't be sure if killing the sorceress would free her
brothers, so she had to be careful.

When she reached the courtyard, she took the egg from her
pouch and held it in both hands. The colored lights echoed the painted
sunset sky above her in a way that made her smile.

Rather than call for the sorceress as she'd intended, Unegen
paused, The egg seemed so fragile and the idea of smashing it so wrong,
Once again, the beating of the heart within grew louder.

Unegen wondered at the pain removing her heart must have
caused the sorceress, Was it anything compared to the pain of losing
her only love? The colored lights brightened. She ran her fingers over
the facets of the egg and the surface shivered, Then she knew, with no
doubt, that violence was not the key to opening the egg.

She leaned forward and pressed her lips to one small pane of
glass. The egg split open without a sound to reveal its contents.

Unegen had seen many hearts, She'd gutted all manner of
animals. But never in her life had she seen an organ so obviously
diseased. The heart of the sorceress was blacker than the sky on a
moonless night and gnarled with blood vessels that had never existed
ina mortal body. She almost dropped the egg when the heart suddenly
lurched, but she managed to hold on.

“| see you've found it,” the sorceress’s disembodied voice said
from everywhere, “Are you pleased with your conquest?"

Unegen swallowed and tightened her hands around the egg. The
lips of two fingers brushed the warm surface of the pulsing heart. 'The
men you've imprisoned are my brothers. Set them free or |'ll destroy
you.”

“Duckling,” the warm honey voice said, “you would be doing me
a service by ending my interminable life.” The ground under Unegen's
feet grumbled with displeasure. "But | don't take kindly to threats.”

Lightning struck from a cloudless sky, so bright and loud that
Unegen recoiled, instinctively cradling the egg and heart against her
stomach.

The roaring assault stopped, and Unegen tried to catch her
breath. “Set them free or I'll kill you.” Her voice shook with fear and with
the certainty that she could never crush the sorceress’s heart. When
there was no answer, Unegen lifted her head.

The sorceress stood before Unegen, tears shining in her eyes. “If
you had asked me to release them for you, | would have.”

Unegen swallowed past the ache in her throat. "Set my brothers

41

free.”

The sorceress waved her hand absently. Adeep, rumbling sound
came from the direction of the statues. The sorceress turned away and
retreated inside the palace. Unegen ran for the garden.

Her brothers and their brides readied their horses in the
courtyard while Unegen watched the quiet walls of the palace. There
had been an argument around the fire the previous night about what
their next step should be. The group was split between those that
wanted to hunt down the sorceress to try to kill her again and those
that wanted to leave her be.

Unegen hadn't told them about the heart. It rested in its egg once
more in the pouch that hung from her belt. They had asked how Unegen
had freed them, and she responded by saying that she’d merely asked.
They all laughed, but they seemed to believe her, except for Oyugun,
who frowned but didn’t contradict her. In the end, Oyugun had won
them all to his side with the argument that hunting the sorceress put
the ladies in too much danger,

They were all mounted and ready to set off wnen Unegen pulled
Atlan out of line and rode next to Oyugun’s mare. "| have something |
need to do. Go ahead.”

Oyugun's dark eyes scanned the front of the palace. He lowered
his voice to a whisper. “She's still in there, isn't she?”

“She won't try to stop you. I'll catch up.”

He gave her the full weight of his disapproving frown. “It's too
dangerous.”

“we been here for weeks and she hasn't harmed me. I'll be
all right.” Unegen nudged Atlan to bring her around and end the
conversation.

“Father will be proud to hear how you rescued us," Oyugun
called after her.

“| know.” She rode back toward the castle, wondering why he
brought up their father now. She didn't look back as Oyugun informed
the rest of the party that they would be moving on. If they saw worry in
her face, they might not leave.

When she could no longer hear them, she brought Atlan to a halt
and dismounted. Unegen walked the rest of the way to the palace on
foot, She hesitated when she reached the doorway, then pushed the
heavy doors open.

“| know you're still here.”

“Where else would | go?" The sorceress materialized in front of
Unegen, severe and beautiful. “| had hopes your brothers would try to
get their revenge.”

“Do you crave blood so badly?”

The sorceress paused, then shook her head. “No, but | didn’t

42

want you to go.”

Trying to ignore the blood rushing
to her cheeks, Unegen cleared her throat. “|
wanted to give this back to you.” She pulled
the egg, closed once more, from her pouch.

The sorceress examined the egg with
a frown, “You should keep that. How else can
you be sure I'll let you all escape?”

“Because I'm not going. I’m staying
here.” She hadn't been certain what she was
going to say until the words escaped her.
Relief eased the tension she hadn't realized
she'd been carrying since her brothers had
been restored,

The sorceress closed her eyes for a
moment. When she opened them, she sighed.
“You should be with your family.”

Unegen stepped forward, offering the
sorceress the jeweled egg, "I've done my duty
to them. They are free. | owe them nothing
else. They would make me a slave to a husband
| don’t want.”

The corners of the sorceress's lips
(trembled. “That's yours, to do with as you will.”

Unegen lowered the egg and hugged it
against her chest. “Then I'll protect it and put
an arrow in the heart of anyone who tries to
take it from me.”

The sorceress smiled softly and
reached to touch Unegen's face. The light from
(he egg intensified, bending swirls of colored
light around them. In the distance, the sound
of tumbling water began as tears fell from the
sorceress's eyes,

coral moore studied writing at Albertus
Magnus College. She mainly writes speculative
fiction, including the Broods of Fenrir series. You
can find more information about her work at
chaosandinsanity.com.

kristina stipetic is a comics artist, creator of the
queer romance graphic novel 14 Nights (14nights.

kstipetic.com). Her work has appeared in Beyond ;

and The Monster Anthology, Demon Edition. She is an
American expat living in Suzhou, China,

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Tributaries
«by Illise Montoya

finding home

by a. mere rustad

The reality | was born in ceased to exist when | was three years
old. So Mama and | moved to a different reality.

We moved a lot, actually.

"We can't stay more than a few years,” Mama would say as she
unzipped the fabric of the space-time continuum and scanned the
flickering images inside.

There were so many that | got motion sick if | looked too long.

But Mama always knew which one to pick. She'd catch a corner
of a shimmering image, brightly colored like rainbow sprinkles, then
take my hand and pull us both through.

| met Amand in a coffee shop on a rainy day two years and nine
months after my mother and | moved to this reality, The cafe menu
offered various espressos and lattes, the Germanized English happily
familiar. | thanked the barista and looked for a seat.

That first glimpse: Amand sat in a corner, reading Die Liebe der
Bienen, a bestseller literary graphic novel that had a different ending
for everyone who read it.

Grayish afternoon light highlighted his black curly hair and dark
skin, and his glasses adjusted to the light flow, the rims bright blue.
Broad shoulders were accentuated by the fashionable sweater he
wore, navy blue with the New Chicago Physics (the local soccer team)
logo emblazoned on the chest.

He flipped the last page and sighed, dark eyes half-closed in
contentment.

He caught me staring at him. | was used to that by now, Odd
looks when | couldn't lose my accent or maybe | had a neon sign over
my head that read DOESNT BELONG.

“What ending did you get?” | asked.

He grinned. “Dominik and Erik reconcile, and then Erik
proposes and he accepts and they live well to their days’ end. It's what

| hoped for.”
“Amand,” he said, offering his hand.

G ?
aidn t “Joseph,” | replied. We shook. My
t heartbeat hadn't slowed, though | had yet to
to in sip my cappuccino. “Can | join you?"
love He nodded at the plush armchair next

to him. “I would like this.”

Or maybe I did. It gn

Each new reality was different.
baer oe Sometimes there'd be buildings in the
oO * sky, sometimes technology was less advanced,
4400086

| smiled back. “That's the ending | got, too.
Well, Dominik proposed when | read it.”

and sometimes there wasn't anybody around at all.

(Mama picked those empty realities once in a while, but we
only stayed for a few days.)

Mama had a talent for explaining who we were to the people
in each reality: why we had weird clothes and accents, why our skin
was the color it was, sometimes why | was a boy (if they hadn't been
invented yet), sometimes why she was a girl, and sometimes why we
had genders at all.

She had a gift. She knew which realities were unsafe. She could
make people like us, or at least not hate us. She was extraordinary,
but she never drew attention, Mama designed new cover stories
depending on where we ended up. Mama never had trouble
understanding the language. She'd teach me, but | didn’t have her skill.
it got harder as | got older, too, always being the weird kid.

“Don't make friends you can't let go of, Joseph,” Mama always
said. “We can't stay long.”

“Why not?” | asked angrily when | was ten. I'd just met
Mohamed, who lived down the street, and he was going to let me
drive his custom-built racecar.

“Because our atoms don't belong here,” Mama said, “and
eventually we'll crumble into little pieces if we stay too long. Reality-
bending is tricky.”

So | didn't have many friends. | knew people, lots of people,
but they were a sea of changing faces and bodies and names (or
sometimes numbers).

| tried not to let Mama know | was lonely. We had to survive.
She was trying to make a good life for us.

And she'd promised that one day we'd find Daddy again.
Amand and | spent the next two months inseparable. He
showed me the old baroque district, full of niche clubs and piano hells
and statues of composers, artists, and philosophers. We toured the
Babylon Gardens, reconstructed and raised half a mile into the sky.

| was nineteen. I'd been in and out of so many schools | wasr't
sure what level my education qualified. Amand had just finished
college. He was applying for jobs in the energy reconstruction
projects, striving for cleaner power and more of it. New Chicago was
prospering, but so much of the continent was still ravaged from the
Fallout War; reconstruction and rehabilitation for the country was
slow.

Amand wanted to help change that. His determination was
clear in every fluid movement, in the line of his jaw, in the brightness
of his eyes. | couldn't keep my eyes off him when we were together, |
didn’t want to.

| didn’t want to fall in love. Or maybe | did, It was so hard to tell.

“You're moody today, mein Herz,” Amand said, rubbing his
thumb over my knuckles. We held hands and leaned on the railing

45

atop the new hydroelectric dam. It wasn’t technically open to tourists
yet, but he'd snuck in before—his aunt was the foreman and the
workers liked him—and told me this was the most stunning view of
the sunrise you could see outside of the tower complexes. “What is
wrong?”

| shrugged. "| have to move soon.”

God, I'd told him when we first went out that | wasn’t going
to be in town for more than a few months. It was my mother’s work
schedule, I'd explained, and | accompanied her because she had
health concerns. (The lies had been harder than ever before, stuck like
congealed oatmeal in my throat.)

| was so tired of moving. But what choice did we have? Move, or
cease to exist.

“But you don't want to,” Amand said slowly.

| gazed down at the polished curve of the dam. It was a long
way down, even with the safety nets strung at intervals across the
face. “Nein,” | whispered. “| like it here.”

Amand slung an arm over my shoulders. “There is no one else
who could take care of her while she travels?”

Mama didn’t need my help. | needed hers. How long would it
continue? Until she died from an accident or old age? Since | didn't
know how to unzip the space-time continuum, I'd be stuck facing my
inevitable death somewhere that wasn't home. Alone.

The depressive realization hit like I'd swallowed an old, bitter
espresso shot. Dizziness swamped my head and | pushed away from
the railing before | lost my balance or puked. Armand's arm steadied
me.

The nippy wind tousled his hair and snaked down my collar.

It was still dark, our only illumination the safety lights down the
curvature of the dam.

“| can't leave her,” | said. The first red bars of dawn peeked over
the horizon, backlighting the uneven cityscape’s profile.

Amand's expression was unreadable. “Well,” he said at length,
"We can always write or vidchat, and you can visit again, ja?"

But | couldn't, so | only nodded. | rubbed my face. The wind had
made my eyes water.

He was right, though. The sunrise view from the dam was
amazing.

My second favorite reality was where | met Dr, Amelia D'Cruz.
Mom dated her briefly while we integrated into the tropical cities
spread like a beaded bracelet around the equator.

| was six, and Mama had promised me she would look fora
doctor who could perform gender reassignment surgery for me. It
took her slightly longer not to call me Josephine, but only a little.

Dr. Amelia smelled like bubblegum and cinnamon, and she
always smiled so bright that | wanted to smile back.

| told Mama | didn’t want to leave when, almost three years
46

to the day—my surgery two years past—we
packed our bags and said goodbyes.

A ? I clung to Dr, Amelia, who rubbed
I didn't know my back and kept saying, “It's okay,
what a home Joseph. You'll find a place you belong
one day. You'll find your home. |
promise.”
was, what | didn’t believe her, and | didn't
stability speak to my mom for days after we
stepped into a new reality and started
was like. over yet again.

“It's time to go, Joseph,” Mama said. We
sat eating noodles and watching the news that same evening. “We
have to leave tomorrow,”

| set my bowl down, my stomach heavy. How had time gone by
50 fast? | thought | had another week left with Amand.

“Are you sure?” | asked.

She fiddled with her chopsticks. Her gaze remained on the
screen. "We've been here too long. There's nothing for us.”

“What?” That wasn't her usual explanation. She would tell me of
the destabilization in her bones or the static buzz in her sinuses that
told her we were getting close.

“He's not here,” she said.

Dad had disappeared before | was old enough to remember,
She said we'd find him and we'd discover a reality that we could live in
as a family.

We'd wasted sixteen years. | didn’t know what a home was,
what stability was like.

All | could think of was Amand's face, his quirky smile, and his
stuttering laugh. The wey his hands felt in my hair and on my skin
How he always arrived on time. Even when his temper flared and we
fot into arguments about politics or history, he’d kiss me afterwards
and say the way | confused the timeline was adorable, making up
events in place of real ones.

(I hadn't told him that those events were real somewhere else.)

| stood up and slammed my bow! in the sink. “We're not going
to find him, you know."

"He's out there somewhere,” Mama said, almost to herself. “We
aren't giving up on him. Pack your things.”

She knew what she was looking for. She had always known.

| didn’t know what he looked like, let alone what kind of man he
was. She never told me stories; maybe she didn’t want me to grieve for
something | might never have.

| thought of Amand and how he always wore mismatched socks
and programmed his glasses frames to match his shirts. Did | even
know what | wanted?

I'd always been focused on not growing too attached, on being

4?

able to leave everything behind. It felt like I'd grown up a hundred
times and then fallen down the ladder to land back where I'd started,
never knowing when it would stop.

Would | ever have what she had with my father if | always left
before | could find out?

Mama put a hand on my shoulder. She had to reach, now, "It
won't be forever, Joey.”

| covered her hand with mine.

| was so tired of running and never getting anywhere. It had to
stop.

“| know,” | said. "That's why I'm not leaving.”

| turned around in time to see her bite her lip.

“Nonsense,” she said without conviction.

held her hand tight. “| can't do this anymore. | want to stay
here, with Amand”—if he would keep me—"“even if it’s dangerous,”

“But...” She took several deep breaths. Arguing with herself.
Finding excuses, reasons, commands. Her shoulders slumped. “You're
grown up, aren't you? Not my little boy anymore.”

“I'll always be your son, Mom, But | need to do this for myself. |
need something to call my own.”

She blinked hard. “You won't have much time. A few weeks at
most. Please just come with me. We'll find your father—"

“No," | said gently. “A little time's better than having forever with
nothing to show for it.” That was one of Amand’s favorite quotes from
Die Liebe der Bienen.

What if she was right and | disintegrated once the three years
were up?

Was that really worth hurting Amand? Or was it any different
than stepping out of this reality, out of his life, forever?

“Please, Mama.” | kissed her hand. “| need to stay.”

She pulled me into a hug. Her body trembled. “Let me show
you how to unzip the fabric,” she whispered. "So you have a way out.”

“No,” | said into her hair. | wanted to be like the people around
me, given one life to make what they would of it. “I'll take my chances.”

| asked Amand to come with me to see my mother off the next
day. | didn’t know where she was headed.

We stood in a dry field outside the city limits as Mom unzipped
the space-time continuum. Amand gripped my arm as we watched.

She held out her hand once to me, but | shook my head.

“Bye, Mom," | said.

She didn’t say goodbye, Maybe she couldn't.

She took hold of a corner of another reality and pulled herself
through, Then she was gone, and the seam melted closed.

| sagged against Amand.

Mama wasn't here, That sudden emptiness hit me harder than
any reality-hop. My knees buckled.

He caught me and held me,

48

| didn't know | could miss her so badly so fast.

“What if | never see her again?" | said into Amand's chest.

The rims of his glasses pressed against my temple. “We always
find our family.” Then, softly, “Will you stay with me?"

“Ja,” | sald. "As long as | can.”

| felt him smile,

| haven't seen my mother in ten years.

Amand and | got married. We adopted two beautiful children—
Monique and Sebastian—and we've been living each day as if it's the
last, It might be.

But, sometimes, | don’t think it will happen the way she
predicted. | don't think my mother wasn’t entirely honest with me as a
kid,

My dad ran off through a different reality when | was two. She
waited a year, but he didn't come back. She wanted to find him the
only way she knew how, and what else was she going to do with me
except take me along?

Maybe the three year limit was just an arbitrary definition
because she couldn't bear to stay anywhere too long and let Dad drift
father away.

I'm not angry at her. If | hadn't reality-hopped, | wouldn't
have met Amand. | wouldn't have settled down in this sky apartment
overlooking New Chicago, landed a job as an art historian, founda
loving husband, two amazing kids, friends, and a life I'm content with.
(| dedicated my first memoir to Dr. Amelia and my mom, in gratitude.)

There are days | wonder if Mama was right about our atoms
not connecting with this reality we live in now. One day, | might just
snap out of existence. If! do, | won't have too many regrets.

(I'd told Amand my whole story after my mom left. He believed
every word. The day before he proposed a year later, | told him again
about the risk | could just vanish,

“Risks are just life with different \etters,” he said, and kissed me.
"We'll take risks and life together, ja?”

“Ja," I'd said, pulling him closer.)

If |see Mama again, the only regret I'll have is that she won't
stay for very long. Wherever she is, | hope she finds what she’s looking
lor. Me? I've found my home.

a, There rustad is a twenty-something queer, nonbinary writer and filmmaker
who lives in the Midwest United States. Their stories have appeared in Flash
fiction Online, Daily Science Fiction, Scigentasy, and [deomancer. Find more of
their work at amercrustad.com.

49

architecture of a blistex pot

by rebecca evans

Pungent. | felt his spit in my mouth;
| didn’t know if | wanted more on the futon at four—dark outside.
Afterward,

he said he cheated on me and
| said | didn't care. As if his molecules were now separate
from mine.

He was the only one that noticed my hair
had changed. Caleb, who liked swords too much but

looked like Ryan Gosling and knew it. Color guard-girl told me
| looked like Rachel McAdams, so we were

the perfect fit. | cracked him up by
reading Revelations, but

didn't want him to break my seventh seal. Drowning in spit, too afraid
to swallow, to assimilate him. Fluid-bonded.
Disgusting.

| miss when | didn’t have to pretend. | wanted to make him
happy, but not a man.

He told me my lips tasted sweet and that | needed practice. Thank God
he was a Christian, Out of all the people, | wanted him the most.

Not hyperventilate, heart-pounding want. Slow burn,
ember want, The thought of sex with him disgusts me.

Disgust. Sex. Sex is bad,
getting punched. Not with him. Sex meant fried chicken
before | was a vegetarian.

Still, not interested. Young “love”— we just wanted someone
to want us. Still do. | couldn't stop looking at his lips,

but | didn't want them: | read in Seventeen
| was supposed to.

sometimes when | swallow, | think of him.

rebecca, evans is an asexual poet and future English teacher. Her work
often explores the limitations of language in the face of strong emotion. You
can purchase her poetry chapbooks at tiny.cc/revans.

@51

\ 4

the hollow

by kendra leigh speedling

They came for Kaya first, all glittering eyes and hungry razor-
teeth. When they smiled, their claws clicked together in unison, a
macabre applause. | stood between her and them, hoping my knees
wouldn't fail me, and said, “No.”

They tilted their heads. For a moment, | swore they were
frowning—what passed for a frown on those twisted faces.

“You can't," she said, looking as stunned as they were. Helplessly,
she folded in on herself, her hand wrapped tight around mine.

“They shouldn't get to have you.” | was proud; my voice shook
only a little.

“No. No, no—they chose me, not you. It’s all right. Go.”

“I'm not leaving.”

They clicked their claws again, until the leader glanced backwards.
The clicking scattered to a stop, and the leader took a step forward. It
brandished a claw at me. The message was clear: Leave.

“Im not leaving her alone to die!” | shouted, blinking my stinging
eyes.

The leader tilted its head at an even more exaggerated angle than
(he others. Confusion? Did they get confused? It struck me, suddenly,
how little we knew about them, these things that we'd existed with, for,
and under for so long.

Click, click. Leave.

“Nari.” Kaya squeezed my hand. “You can't."

“| know," I said, “But I'm going to.”

| didn’t have much of a plan. | just knew that | wasn't letting them
lake her, not without a fight. In the days since Kaya had been chosen, I'd
gotten all the information | could. Maybe it wouldn't be enough.

Then we'll both die, and | won't have to live with an empty space
where my heart should be.

“But the village—"

“Damn the village! I'd tear down the sky to keep you if | had to.”

She half-stood, clinging to my arm. They hadn't tied her up; it
wasn't traditional. Ropes had never been necessary. People accepted
their duty—at least, that's what we'd always been told. | wondered
sometimes, hearing them howl at night, how many people's sense of
duty had broken upon seeing them. It wouldn't have mattered. The
creatures were fast.

They hadn't moved. Their stares made me feel like something
was crawling around inside my skin, and | wasn't sure if it was my own
fear or their power. The insanity of what | was doing struck me—you
did not defy them—and | almost turned around and ran. Instead, |
swallowed the burning terror in my throat and held Kaya close.

@53

And | said The Word.

They flinched backwards, screeching, their fur-skin-flesh warping
in two quick tremors before returning to how it had been. | clapped
a hand over my mouth as | gagged; Kaya’s hands went over her ears
instead.

| bit my lip, hard enough to taste blood, and said The Word again.

Their shrieks were chillingly human. They went right through
me, cutting down to the bone. | couldn't breathe, couldn't think—

Kaya squeezed my hand.

| struggled to stand up straight, my knees shaking. Slowly, the
howling died away. | inhaled, the sharp air stinging my nostrils.

"The Bargain is off.” | said, tumbling quickly through the
memorized words. “You will claim no more of us. You will not venture
near the village. We will no longer ask for your aid.”

The leader's mouth parted ina terrifying grin. Very weil, it seemed
to say. Without a sound, it turned and padded back the way they'd come.
The others followed, sneaking backward glances at us as they departed.
We were left alone.

It was too late to be horrified with what I'd done, but it prickled
me anyway. They were our power against the other villages. They were
our gods.

But they had threatened Kaya. Kaya, who'd comforted me
after my father went away; Kaya, who sang as she foraged through
the outskirts of the woods; Kaya, who always wanted to search a little
longer, explore a little farther into the forest. Some had said, when she
was chosen, that it was fitting that such a curious person should be the
one to face the creatures.

Given a choice between Kaya and salvation, | would choose her
in a heartbeat.

Her weight pressed against me, a reassuring counterpoint to the
foggy gloom.

"What are we going to do now?" she murmured. | loved her more
for that small ‘we’ than | ever had before. She might have resented me
for saving her, drawn away in horror at the enormity of what I'd done.
But with one word, she declared herself my partner in truth. She would
not even allow herself to consider that I'd done her no favors. That fear
would haunt me alone.

“We'll have to go back,” | said.

‘They won't like that.”

"No"

“What are we going to say to them?”

A hysterical laugh bubbled up in my throat, “That the monsters
are gone.”

The monsters were not gone.

They were simply no longer our allies against the world.

54

They shouted when we returned, their words sharp like teeth
against my skin. They were our only hope, they said, What have you done?
they asked.

| stood there, Kaya’s hand in mine, and wondered why the things
they said did not harm me more. They were all true, after all. Still, Kaya
was standing warm beside me, and | could not bring myself to regret
what | had done.

They did not know what to do with us. Those who went to the
hollow were not meant to return, but there was nothing in place to deal
with those who did, for it had never happened. They argued about our
fates. It was suggested that we be brought back, tied up if necessary, to
be taken by the creatures after all. Elder Liseth, with a face like a pickled
lemon, said that this would not matter. What was done was done. No
further sacrifices would undo it.

If nothing else, | thought, | had broken that cycle. No one else
would have to feel the gnawing dread the creatures brought when they
approached. No one else would have to watch their lover or parent or
friend walk into the fog, never to return. That would be replaced with
warfare. Simple. Straightforward. Blood might run through the grass,
through the river, but it would not be devoured by them.

| tried to ask that Kaya be shown mercy. It had been my actions,
not hers, that broke The Bargain. Their hearts were unmoved. In their
view, Kaya was an even worse offender than |. She was alive when

she should not be, the ghost of the condemned walking among us.
Anathema, they said.

They spoke of sending us to another village. Exile. Death, in truth,
for homeless wanderers would not be welcome anywhere, and the only
villages around us were enemies, Enemies, and barbarians, competing
with one another to be the most bloodthirsty. The monsters had kept
them from finding us.

Elder Jakov said that sending us away would not do, Even if the
Daaleth or the Kor captured us and fed our insides to their dogs, it
would not fix our crimes. And it would give them a trail to trace, back to
the village, back to what they needed to protect.

They put us in a house together, an abandoned shack at the
edge of the village, while they decided what was to be done. They knew
we would not escape. The only thing around us for miles was the forest
and the creatures that lived within it.

She looked older than | remembered her, although we'd parted
only the day before. Had there been streaks of gray in her hair then;
had her face been so lined? Or was this another consequence of my
treason?

She did not acknowledge Kaya. She looked only at me, through
me, as if she would strip the skin from my bones with her eyes.

“Hello, Mother," | said.

She slapped me once across the cheek.

Kaya moved forward to defend me, but | held up a hand to
forestall her. Mother had the right. In the old days, she would have had
the power to cut out my tongue for disobedience. We, however, lived in
more enlightened times.

“You fool,” she said. “Some things are buried for a reason.”

She'd known The Word existed, of course; she'd been brought
onto the Elders’ Council last year. They all must have known. They had
the book; they knew how to read like | did. How Mother must have
regretted teaching me now.

They'd made their choice: the village first. Always. No matter
what.

“| couldn’t—"

“Its been decades of this.” She was shaking, glaring right into
my eyes. “Centuries, perhaps. And you think you can change it with one
word? Stupid girl. They'll destroy us all.”

Some malicious demon took hold of my tongue then. "Instead of
one ata time. Piece by piece, they chip away—"

“Be quiet.” | had never before heard my mother sound that cold.
“Do you think you're the only person who had someone they didn't
want to lose?”

In her voice were the sharp jagged edges of fear, not of the
future, but of the past. Beneath her words, she was saying, tel! me it

56

wasn't all for nothing. Tell me we couldn't have done this all along.

| had spoken to wound, and I'd hit true. My words were wrong,
(hough...the village could have continued on like this. Forever. One
person a year to the creatures, in exchange for protection for the rest
Of us,

| did not know whether it was right, or fair, or worthwhile.
Perhaps it was a Weakness in me, that | hadn't been able to stand the
thought of losing Kaya. But | looked at my mother's face, twisted with
tage and barely concealed terror, and | remembered holding her hand
when | was small, both of us watching my father vanish into the fog.
Had she wanted to stop it? Had she tried?

The children should suffer as the parents have suffered. It is only
fair.

She shook me by the shoulders, as if | were a child again. I'd
never realized how much taller than her | was, She had always seemed
larger than her physical frame to me, until the day Kaya had been called.

| felt no anger, no pain. Only pity.

Having said what she wanted to say, she left.

The council made their judgment the next day. | held Kaya’s hand
us the words floated over us.

You shall both return to the hollow...one full night...if you remain
olive afterwards... exile...never return...

Some part of me had known that it would come to this, from the
moment that Kaya's name had been selected. | could not keep both her
and my home, and | had made my choice.

They led us back to the hollow and tied our hands together,
eliminating any doubt as to what they wanted for our fate. If they could
not undo what we had done, they could at least get revenge.

They sat us down. They did not speak to us. We were outcasts,
unclean.

“I'm sorry,” | murmured to Kaya as they melted away, vanishing
into the safe side of the fog.

"I'd be dead already if it weren't for you.” She laid her head on my
shoulder. “I'm sorry | had to take you with me.”

"You didn't take me anywhere | didn't choose.”

“You don't think about it,” she said suddenly. “It's just how things
are. You know them, you watch them disappear, but you think it's the
way things have to be, Until it's you.” She couldn't wipe her eyes with
lier tied hands; the tears were left to run down her face unchecked.

“| know,” | said, holding her close.

"When | saw you walking towards me, |...| knew. You weren't
foing to let me go.”

“Never.”

“| don't know if | could have done it," she confessed, her voice
small and broken. “If it had been you.”

57

| brushed her hair out of her face, ignoring the rope pulling tight
against my wrists, and kissed her. Oh, Kaya. !know, my dear. You explore,
and you wander, but you have never been one to fight. Not really.

“It's all right,” | said. “It’s all right.”

We waited for darkness to fall.

They surrounded us just after sunset. It was the same as the
night before, as if time had gone backwards. | couldn't shake the feeling
that it had, that what I'd done had been erased.

| said The Word, and they did not react.

Why—

But | knew why. The Bargain had given us power over the
creatures, however small, Now that it was broken, The Word was no
threat to them. The village had known what they were doing when they
sent us here.

We are going to die.

Kaya’s fingers tightened around mine.

“Together,” | whispered. “Always.”

The leader stepped forward and howled, sending a chain of
noise throughout the pack.

“On this day,” Kaya murmured, “we come together to make two
souls one.”

| turned to look at her, startled. She was reciting the vows,
58

though we were not yet old enough to make our partnership official.
This coming year, we would be—would have been.

“We declare our partnership in front of these witnesses,” | said,
as the creatures completed their circle around us. "| am Nari Riverborn,
and lam here of my own free will.”

“lam Kaya Frostfell, and | am here of my own free will." Kaya’s
voice was soft, but it did not shake.

“| swear," we said together, “from this moment forward, to
consider the two of us as one. | swear to respect your spirit in life and
honor your memory in death.”

| wondered if anyone else had ever taken their vows while seeing
(hat death creeping toward them. | took a deep breath, feeling Kaya's
hand warm in mine.

And | was not afraid.

“| swear to trust you above all others. | swear to comfort you
when you are sad, tend you when you are hurt, and celebrate when you
are victorious.”

“| swear to be your ally in all things,” Kaya finished, looking at me
rather than the creatures.

They were simply watching us—waiting? No. Why would they?

“I swear,” | said, my voice ringing through the hollow, “to be your
ally.” | stood up, helping Kaya to her feet. | would not die crouching
underneath them like a child. “In all things.”

I kissed her as they closed in, the fog swirling around us.

There was a moment of pain, and then nothing at all.

| opened my eyes.

| was dead. Or | was supposed to be. Was this the afterworld?

One of the creatures was lying beside me. | scrambled to my feet
with a shriek. At least, | meant to do both of those things, but neither
happened. My scramble turned out poorly, as | tripped over my own
limbs and fell, and the shriek came out as more of an awful howl. A howl
like...

| didn't have the right number of legs anymore. Looking down at
myself caused a sense of such wrongness that | had to stop.

The creatures were still surrounding us, but | didn't see Kaya—
yes | did. Next to me. Right where she had been.

We'd become them.

Had this happened to everyone? All the sacrifices? All this time,
we'd been making more of them?

In the beginning, we were none, a voice grated in my head. |
flinched backwards as the leader stepped forward. There was the forest,
with its hunger, and the humans, with their battles. That village made us to
save them from the bloodshed.

That was nonsensical. The creatures had always been in the
lorest, from the beginning of time.

59

“No,” | tried to say, but it came out No in that same grating,
internal voice.

The Kaya-creature was getting to her feet—t still thought of it as
‘her’. Her mouth gaped open in a silent scream, those teeth glimmering
in the moonlight. She spun around frantically, trying to orient herself,
only to end up ina tangled heap.

The first, they say, had their souls torn from their bodies. The leader
pawed at the ground, the dirt scattering under those misshapen claws.
That was the ritual. We others followed, year after year, as the first ones
claimed us for their own.

| don't believe you, | said. It was one thing for the village to obey
the creatures’ will, but creating them?

Do you not? Its eyelids flickered together, then apart again. Such
thoughts have long departed from human minds; they do not know this
anymore. Still, they pay their toll, and leave their kin to die. That is why you
broke the Bargain.

This was so, and yet | did not like to hear it from that jagged
mouth. The idea of the sacrifices being done out of calculation, not
necessity, made my insides crawl as much as when | looked at them; we
could not have made them, we could not.

Kaya rose to her feet, ungainly legs wobbling underneath her.
You wish us to join you, she said, and she did not sound appalled.

You will join us, the leader said. Or you will perish alone. The
dangers of the world do not only apply to humans.

Not alone, | said, glancing at Kaya.

It dipped its head in concession. Not alone, then. But two will make
as poor a defense as one.

| met Kaya’s eyes, such as they now were, | could not read her
thoughts through the black filmy orbs, but | had a sense of her that | had
not had before. | could fee! her standing beside me, her calm wrapping
around us both.

It’s not true, | said at last, although | no longer believed my own
words.

The leader turned to me, its black eyes implacable. A fish does not
believe in the existence of trees. What will you choose?

| looked down at my claws. Do / have a choice?

In what you are, no. In what you do, always. It stepped closer,
nudging my head up with a paw so | was meeting its eyes. Choose wisely,
dear one.

Then | understood.

And | knew—in the same way that | was sure of Kaya’s love—he
wouldn't lie to me.

| choose life, Father.

He smiled his terrible grin, and it seemed a shade less terrible
than when I'd first seen it. Only a small bit. But it was enough.

| choose Nari, Kaya said, / always have.

60

| did not tell her ‘thank you.’ | did not tell her ‘I'm sorry.’ | did not
(ell her ‘| love you.’ Because she knew all these things, as soon as they
passed through my mind.

And | knew her reply.

ee eeoeesese#e#?

kendra leigh speedling is a writer with a master’s in library science and
a passion for diversity in science fiction and fantasy stories. Her work has
appeared in Penumbra and will be upcoming in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. You
(an follower her twitter - @KendraLs.

savannah horrocks is an introverted nerdy weirdo who makes art and
likes monsters, dogs, and toys. She volunteers at an animal rescue and still
sleeps with a stuffed animal every night. You can find more of her work at
savannahhorrocks.com.

61

proof

by johnny sfarnas

[i watch

you = a rapid setting sun slips under
horizon = mason jar lip = your quick eclipse
i.m nervous > thirsty

walls = (cherry / ginger)you blaze]

+

[celluloid gels cover the lights + actually it is already
night in + outside this brooklyn bar

where we come ~ perverse puritans

- the reproachful eye of the day

good fuck = good drink
2xTall+hairy+fast+inexpensivet+teasy2get

my empty glass # a hand mirror]

+

[product of guy fondling my ass

=| turn + kiss him

some guy > no guy

but i = an inconstant variable

C02 pools at the bottom of my esophagus + purges
=a little belch/giggle/stumble

=now outside + cigarette

(i don.t smoke ~ i don.t believe in god or guilt but still
both romp in my ribs ~ cage dancers enclosed in ivory
+ enclothed in red patent booty shorts

+ twerking like a dirty heart]

+

[you.re on the dance floor now we +

((distance + bodies + time + strangeness)

- (desire x intoxication x your quadratic ass “2))
my quotient body aches w/

the sum of hormones + recent release x 0=

all DTF]

[| push through

the waves of eagle-eyed + bear clawed gays

+ anew romantic (mis)

understanding of salmon

shredding soft bodies scaling gravel and gravity
= entirely DTF

we.re dancing
hips in a tight orbit around a private world
your gyration expands at each new ellipse
with each pass the moon gets further from earth]

{we lived 450 million years ago

soon after land plants proliferated

we lay naked on night-dewed moss,

listening to each other breath in time with the mute
sonata of pre-existent crickets

\don.t know your name but ij know that our combined gravities
no gravitas
your resting head on my glowing chest

as the huge moon floats over us

then behind the jagged black

lashes of prehistoric ferns
my high + tutelary eye drifting closed]

see oe eecnee

johnny sfarnas is still figuring things out. He writes a lot of poetry
avid works as an international flight attendant based in New York City.

63

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